An Approach to Treat Numerical Information in the Text Simplification Process

Abstract

Public information services and documents should be accessible to the widest possible readership. In particular, information from these sources often takes the form of numerical expressions, which pose comprehension problems for many people, including people with disabilities, who are often also exposed to poverty, illiteracy, or lack of access to advanced technology. This paper presents an approach to treat numerical information in the text simplification process to make it more accessible. A generic model for automatic text simplification systems is presented, aimed at making documents more accessible to readers with cognitive disabilities. The proposed approach is validated with a real system to simplify numerical expressions in Spanish. This system is then evaluated and the results show that it is appropriate for the task at hand.