Cognitive Web Accessibility: Readability 2011

Computational Methods to Extract Meaning From Text and Advance Theories of Human Cognition
"Over the past two decades, researchers have made great advances in the area of computational methods for extracting meaning from text. This research has to a large extent been spurred by the development of latent semantic analysis (LSA), a method for extracting and representing the meaning of words using statistical computations applied to large corpora of text. Since the advent of LSA, researchers have developed and tested alternative statistical methods designed to detect and analyze meaning in text corpora. This research exemplifies how statistical models of semantics play an important role in our understanding of cognition and contribute to the field of cognitive science. Importantly, these models afford large-scale representations of human knowledge and allow researchers to explore various questions regarding knowledge, discourse processing, text comprehension, and language. This topic includes the latest progress by the leading researchers in the endeavor to go beyond LSA."
Improving Readability of Dyslexic Learners through Document Summarization
E-Learning that blends the internet, the web and the educational activities, is becoming one of the prominent ways for defining teaching and learning experiences as anywhere anytime process. Any teaching learning process must be designed to suit the needs of all and must consider all types of learners including people with disabilities. One of the major learning disabilities found related to learners is the problem of reading. Especially for dyslexic reading is a severe problem. In this regard, this paper focuses on the design of a summarization tool that provides a summary of reading material which helps the dyslexic to have a first level understanding of the content.
Federal Plain Language Guidelines
The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is a community of federal employees dedicated to the idea that citizens deserve clear communications from government. Chapter 4 (p.89): "Write for the web" explains the differences between print and web writing and how to create sites that work for your users.
A Smart Tutoring Aid for the Autistic - Educational Aid for Learners on the Autism Spectrum
"Personalization of the e-Learning environments for the 'Cognitively Disabled' is still to be evolved, as personalization cannot be left to the discretion of the disabled user. It has to be done by the supporting people like the teacher, therapist or the parent. This manual intervention can be minimized, using Self-Learning environments, which can interact with the child, understand him and dynamically personalize the lesson plans, based on his interests, mood and current attention span. Proposing a Smart e-Learning Tutoring model for the Autistic with machine learning capabilities that help in generating dynamic e-Learning sessions, thus maximizing each learner's opportunity to grasp and learn independently."
Ten years of access for all from WSE 2001 to WSE 2011
"At WSE 2001 the theme was Access for All. A decade later, this theme is revisited for WSE 2011. We take this opportunity to discuss the past, present, and future of Web accessibility. Five representative categories of Web accessibility are considered: accommodating disabilities, Web literacy, user interfaces, lingual barriers, and open data."
Development of uniform standards for cognitive technologies
"This project focuses on developing uniform design standards and guidelines for people with cognitive impairment. The main goal of this research is to build on technologies under development in international projects that address accessibility, including Fluid, AEGIS, and the Raising the Floor initiative. This will enable a user with a cognitive disability to receive a presentation of a website tailored to their needs, with key information highlighted, and less important information moved to a backup screen."