A Review of Research-Based Automatic Text Simplification Tools

Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza, José Abreu-Salas, Elena Lloret, Paloma Moreda, Manuel Palomar

Abstract
In the age of knowledge, the democratisation of information facilitated through the Internet may not be as pervasive if written language poses challenges to particular sectors of the population. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of research-based automatic text simplification tools. Consequently, we describe aspects such as the language, language phenomena, language levels simplified, approaches, specific target populations these tools are created for (e.g. individuals with cognitive impairment, attention deficit, elderly people, children, language learners), and accessibility and availability considerations. The review of existing studies covering automatic text simplification tools is undergone by searching two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The eligibility criteria involve text simplification tools with a scientific background in order to ascertain how they operate. This methodology yielded 27 text simplification tools that are further analysed. Some of the main conclusions reached with this review are the lack of resources accessible to the public, the need for customisation to foster the individual’s independence by allowing the user to select what s/he finds challenging to understand while not limiting the user’s capabilities and the need for more simplification tools in languages other than English, to mention a few.
Anthology ID:
2023.ranlp-1.36
Volume:
Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing
Month:
September
Year:
2023
Address:
Varna, Bulgaria
Editors:
Ruslan Mitkov, Galia Angelova
Venue:
RANLP
SIG:
Publisher:
INCOMA Ltd., Shoumen, Bulgaria
Note:
Pages:
321–330
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.ranlp-1.36
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza, José Abreu-Salas, Elena Lloret, Paloma Moreda, and Manuel Palomar. 2023. A Review of Research-Based Automatic Text Simplification Tools. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing, pages 321–330, Varna, Bulgaria. INCOMA Ltd., Shoumen, Bulgaria.
Cite (Informal):
A Review of Research-Based Automatic Text Simplification Tools (Espinosa-Zaragoza et al., RANLP 2023)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/emnlp22-frontmatter/2023.ranlp-1.36.pdf
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