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De PorSimples

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This is the Wiki for the PorSimples project, a dedicated space to organize documents and other information regarding the project, such as published articles, information about the project members, important links, etc.

The Project

In PorSimples (Simplification of Portuguese Text for Digital Inclusion and Accessibility) project we propose the development of a technology to facilitate accessibility to information by the functional illiterates (FI) and potentially by people with other cognitive disabilities (e.g. aphasia or dyslexia). Such technology will be made available by means of two systems aimed to distinct users:

• an authoring system to help authors to produce simplified texts targeting FI, and
• a simplification system to allow for FI to read Web content.

The latter explores the tasks of summarization and simplification (FACILITA system) and also text presentation schemes, which should highlight the associations amongst the main ideas of the text, the named entities, semantic roles and lexical elaboration (FACILITA EDUCATIVO system).

One of the main scenarios in which the proposed technology could be used is that of text simplification to assist FI in reading electronic texts produced, for example, by the Brazilian government or by relevant news agencies, thus promoting the inclusion and digital accessibility.

The focus is in FIs because, according to Síntese dos Indicadores Sociais de 2006 do IBGE, the number of people in these conditions reached 23.5%, in 2005. Additionally, it could help children learning to read or adults being alphabetized. The target language for the texts is Portuguese, for which, to the best of our knowledge, there are not text simplification systems.

This project started in November 2007 and will finish in April 2010. FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado São Paulo) and MSR (Microsoft Research) support this project.

• We are grateful to Jornal Zero (www.zh.com.br/) for making publicaly available a corpus of both the "Para seu Filho Ler" issues from 2006 and 2007 and the 107 news from 2006 e 2007, used in the Editor de Anotação de Simplificação and in the Portal de Córpus Paralelos de Simplificação. We are also grateful for the news from 2008 to be used in the research on lexical simplification.