Tutorial on

Language Technologies for Persons with Disabilities

December 14, 2023, Goa University, Panjim Goa

Collocated with 20th International Conference on Natural Language Processing (14th - 17th December, 2023)

Language Technologies, especially with the recent development in the field of NLP and Machine Learning are set to revolutionize our intraspecies/ interspecies communication. However, these technologies are often inaccessible for persons with disabilities since they are assumed upon the conventional communication requirements. On the other hand, the same technologies with assistive modifications hold great potential for enabling communication and thus greater independence for persons with various disabilities.

In this tutorial along with a brief overview of application of the state-of-the-art NLP and AI/ML technologies for people with several types of disabilities, we focus in-depth on three disabilities: Visual impairment, Dyslexia and Cerebral Palsy. We will discuss how language technologies can aid in education and communication for the target population and highlight the need for such technologies to be available in Indian Languages. We will share our experience on three use cases: measuring reading comprehension, automating text to nonverbal communication and teaching language and math skills. In the three aspects we will focus on potential and challenges of NLP and Machine Learning towards developing assistive technologies for Indian Languages, namely Bangla, Hindi and Odia. We will also discuss how attempt towards developing NLP based assistive technology solutions must go hand in hand with work in other requirements such as auxiliary NLP mechanisms and HCI accessibility.

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