Language Technology for Accessibility

A research focus of the Department of Computational Linguistics is on the contribution of language technology to accessibility for persons with disabilities and special educational needs. The group is headed by Dr. Sarah Ebling.

Current Projects

EASIER: Intelligent Automatic Sign Language Translation (EU H2020 ICT-57, 2021-2023)
capito automatisiert: Automatic text simplification for German (Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG, 2020-2022)
SMILE-II: Scalable Multimodal Sign Language Technology for Sign Language Learning and Assessment II (SNF Sinergia, 2021-2024)

Completed Projects

Publications

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Moryossef, Amit; Tsochantaridis, Ioannis; Aharoni, Roee; Ebling, Sarah; Narayanan, Srini (2020). Real-Time Sign Language Detection using Human Pose Estimation. arXiv.org 04637, University of Zurich.
Battisti, Alessia; Pfütze, Dominik; Säuberli, Andreas; Kostrzewa, Marek; Ebling, Sarah (2020). A Corpus for Automatic Readability Assessment and Text Simplification of German. In: 12th Edition of its Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, Marseille, 11 May 2020 - 16 May 2020.
Säuberli, Andreas; Ebling, Sarah; Volk, Martin (2020). Benchmarking Data-driven Automatic Text Simplification for German. In: Gala, Nuria; Wilkens, Rodrigo. Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Tools and Resources to Empower People with REAding DIfficulties (READI). Marseille: European Language Resources Association, 41-48.
Battisti, Alessia; Ebling, Sarah; Volk, Martin (2019). An Empirical Analysis of Linguistic, Typographic, and Structural Features in Simplified German Texts. In: Sixth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2019), Bari, 13 November 2019 - 15 November 2019.
Haug, Tobias; Ebling, Sarah (2019). Using Open-Source Software for Sign Language Learning and Assessment. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 14(19):188-196.
Haug, Tobias; Ebling, Sarah; Boyes Braem, Penny; Tissi, Katja; Sidler-Miserez, Sandra (2019). Sign language learning and assessment in German Switzerland: Exploring the potential of vocabulary size tests for Swiss German Sign Language. Language Education & Assessment, 2(1):20-40.
Battisti, Alessia. Automatic Cluster Analysis of Texts in Simplified German. 2019, University of Zurich, Philosophische Fakultät.
Ebling, Sarah (2018). Sprachtechnologie für Menschen mit Behinderungen. In: Sonderpädagogik in der digitalisierten Lernwelt. Beiträge der nationalen Tagung Netzwerk Forschung Sonderpädagogik, Zurich, 4 September 2018 - 4 September 2018, 29-46.
Ebling, Sarah; Camgöz, Necati Cihan; Boyes Braem, Penny; et al (2018). SMILE Swiss German Sign Language Dataset. In: Calzolari, Nicoletta; et al. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018). Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 4221-4229.
Kacorri, Hernisa; Huenerfauth, Matt; Ebling, Sarah; Patel, Kasmira; Menzies, Kellie; Willard, Mackenzie (2017). Regression Analysis of Demographic and Technology-Experience Factors Influencing Acceptance of Sign Language Animation. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), 10(1):Article No.: 3.
Ebling, Sarah; Johnson, Sarah; Wolfe, Rosalee; Moncrief, Robyn; McDonald, John; Baowidan, Souad; Haug, Tobias; Sidler-Miserez, Sandra; Tissi, Katja (2017). Evaluation of Animated Swiss German Sign Language Fingerspelling Sequences and Signs. In: Antona, M; Stephanidis, C. Universal Access in Human–Computer Interaction. Vancouver: Springer, 3-13.
Suter, Julia; Ebling, Sarah; Volk, Martin (2016). Rule-based Automatic Text Simplification for German. In: 13th Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS 2016), Bochum, Germany, 19 September 2016 - 21 September 2016.
Rayner, Manny; Bouillon, Pierrette; Ebling, Sarah; Gerlach, Johanna; Strasly, Irene; Tsourakis, Nikos (2016). An Open Web Platform for Rule-Based Speech-to-Sign Translation. In: Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), Berlin, Germany, 8 August 2016 - 10 August 2016.
Jancso, Anna; Rao, Xi; Graën, Johannes; Ebling, Sarah (2016). A Web Application for Geolocalized Signs in Synthesized Swiss German Sign Language. In: Proceedings of the International Conference of Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP), Linz, Austria, 13 July 2016 - 15 July 2016.
Ebling, Sarah; Boyes Braem, Penny (2016). Taking advantage of iLex: Linking an existing web lexicon of technical signs to an iLex corpus lexicon. In: 7th LREC Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, Portorož, Slovenia, 28 May 2016 - 28 May 2016.
Boyes Braem, Penny; Ebling, Sarah (2016). Preventing too many cooks from spoiling the broth: Some questions to consider for collaboration between projects in iLex. In: 7th LREC Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, Portorož, Slovenia, 28 May 2016 - 28 May 2016.
Ebling, Sarah (2016). Building a parallel corpus of German/Swiss German Sign Language train announcements. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21(1):115-129.
Ebling, Sarah. Automatic Translation from German to Synthesized Swiss German Sign Language. 2016, University of Zurich, Philosophische Fakultät.
Ebling, Sarah; Glauert, John (2016). Building a Swiss German Sign Language avatar with JASigning and evaluating it among the Deaf community. Universal Access in the Information Society, 15(4):577-587.
Rayner, Manny; Armando, Alejandro; Bouillon, Pierrette; Ebling, Sarah; Gerlach, Johanna; Halimi, Sonia; Strasly, Irene; Tsourakis, Nikolaos (2015). Helping Domain Experts Build Phrasal Speech Translation Systems. In: Proceedings of the Future and Emerging Trends in Language Technology (FETLT) Workshop, Seville, 19 November 2015 - 20 November 2015.

Media coverage

SNSF Horizonte no. 112 (March 2017)

Google AI Blog post on Amit Moryossef's work to which we contributed (October 2020)

Datasets

A Corpus for Automatic Readability Assessment and Text Simplification of German (Battisti et al. 2020)

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