ICCHP 2012, Linz

AAC Vocabulary Standardisation and Harmonisation - the CCF and BCI Experiences

Mats Lundälv and Sandra Derbring, DART (Sahlgrenska Univ. Hospital), Göteborg, Sweden

BCIBlissymbolics Communication International

ICCHP 2012, Linz

BCIOverview

1. Backgrounda) The Concept Coding Frameworkb) The Blissymbolics Vocabulary

2. Some experiences of Early Standardisation and Harmonisation Efforts

3. Licensing Issues4. Conclusions – Future Perspectives5. References - Links

ICCHP 2012, Linz

BCIBackground

The Concept Coding Framework● A technology defined to break down the isolation and barriers

between different AAC symbol vocabularies by defining an open technology for connecting these vocabularies to each others and to standard lexical and semantic ICT resources.

The Blissymbolics Language and Vocabulary● An interesting and valuable resource in the general vocabulary

standardisation and interoperability work, initially developed as an artificial semantic graphical language, inspired by Chinese writing, later adopted and applied for AAC use. Bliss is a thoroughly semantically defined lexical resource, in particular compared to other AAC symbol libraries. It is unusually concise and well structured, and bridges the space between traditional ideographic and phonological writing systems and concurrent graphic libraries for AAC.

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Concept Coding Framework (CCF)

Why CCF? - … a matter of accessibility …

WCAG 2.0 – Level 3 Success Criteria for Guideline 3.1: ● Alternative representations: summaries, paraphrases, examples,

illustrations, and symbolic languages:➔ Providing summaries to aid understanding➔ Adding non-text content to the site for key pages or sections

specifically to make the site more understandable by users who cannot understand the text only version of the site

● Systems do exist (text-to-symbol parsers, in symbol authoring tools and web services) but they are special & proprietary software and services

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Concept Coding Framework (CCF)

Why CCF? - … a matter of accessibility ...

● Need of the CCF:➔ To provide a standard foundation for connecting AAC symbol

systems to each other and to other language resources➔ To ensure secure and appropriate information exchange between

AAC systems, and standard systems on the market➔ To adhere to emerging standards and formats from the W3C, and

R&D projects➔ To provide access to standard ICT and digital content for new

groups of users including, but not restricted to, those in need of AAC support

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) – what?

What is the CCF? ● An infrastructure and protocol to support multi-modal –

and in particular symbol based – communication● An open source, vendor and platform neutral standard● Allows dynamic re-purposing of textual web, email and

other digital document content into a user’s preferred (symbolic) representation

● Uses the underlying technologies of the semantic web and other mainstream language technologies & ICT (RDF, OWL, Ruby Annotation, etc - eventually EMMA)

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) – how?

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Blissymbolics Language and Vocabulary

Blissymbolics – an interesting and valuable resource in the general vocabulary standardisation and interoperability work

● was initially developed as an artificial semantic graphical language, bridging between spoken languages, inspired by Chinese writing but much more simple to learn, later adopted and applied for AAC use

● is a thoroughly semantically defined lexical resource, in particular compared to other AAC symbol libraries

● is unusually concise and well structured● bridges the space between traditional ideographic and phonological

writing systems and concurrent graphic libraries for AAC. ● New Bliss-words may continuously be created from the existing library of

Bliss-characters according to the detailed specifications of the BCI “Blissymbolics Fundamental Rules” document

● This may be done as needed by local Blissymbol users in the form of “private Blissymbols”, or officially by the BCI Panel as amendments to the BCI-AV (Authorized Vocabulary)

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Background The Blissymbolics Language and Vocabulary

ICCHP 2012, Linz

BCI

Some experiences from the CCF vocabualryharmonisation efforts …

… complications involved in mapping symbol vocabularies via concept codes to a lexical ontology resource like WordNet.

ICCHP 2012, Linz

BCI

Populating the CCF databases:

● We have used the English gloss of the 4800 Blissymbols and around 5000 ARASAAC symbols, mapping them up automatically towards Princeton WordNet concepts, where possible (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), otherwise handled separately.

● Special software has been developed for this process of identifying and suggesting concept IDs for the symbols - several algorithms operating to ensure that crucial information is not being left out while extracting the simplest searchable string possible.

● The available BCI lexicons for Swedish, Spanish and Dutch have then been used, together with other lexical resources to link up the gloss for these other languages, together with inflected forms etc.

● The populated database is then used by the CCF-SymbolServer to serve CCF aware applications like the CCF-SymbolWriter ext. for LO/OO Writer, SAW 6 and the CCF-SymbolDroid AAC app

● Lots of problems occur, some handled, some remaining to be ...

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Experiences of the CCF and BCI work:

● The BCI work of collecting, revising and making the full Authorized Vocabulary widely available has been heavy but rewarding work.

● It will continue with support for more languages, ensuring full coverage of core vocabulary, better structuring and availability of the resource.

● The creation of a semantically based ISO standardised Unicode Bliss font will now be high on the agenda.

● The BCI-AV has been helpful for the first and preliminary population of the CCF database.

● However, now the time has come for starting a structured and more controlled re-population of the CCF databases in smaller steps, starting with core and frequent vocabulary

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Licensing:

● The AAC field is facing an in some ways absurd situation in terms of property rights claims and licensing policies:

➔ Individuals who are not capable of communicating via spoken or conventionally written language are offered alternative means of communication via graphical symbol vocabularies.

➔ Using these resources however, these persons are often made dependent on proprietary owned and managed language resources, which are provided under restrictive commercial licensing conditions.

● Shouldn't language resources be free, as in free speech, also for AAC users?

● This is becoming an increasingly awkward situation in our age of expanding ICT based interactive online communication.

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Licensing:

● There is a range of more freely available AAC alternatives such as Blissymbolics, ARASAAC, Straight-Street Mulberry Symbols and Sclera Pictograms.

● However, here too, problems with conflicting and/or unclear licensing policies cause problems for integrating or mixing these resources with other free material or software.

● A joint effort to promote a common straight licensing policy for free resources without other limitations than the protection of their continued freedom would be of great value.

➔ Licences compatible with the main-stream of free software and other free resources, licenses such as GPL, LGPL, and CreativeCommons-BY-SA, should be encouraged.

● Additional incompatible unnecessary and counter-productive restrictions (such as Non-Commercial) should be discouraged.

ICCHP 2012, Linz

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Conclusions – Future Perspectives:

● The work for establishing a standardised foundation for interoperability between multi-modal and multilingual AAC vocabulary resources has just started.

● To succeed, his work will require decisive and enduring efforts in close co-operation between AAC resource maintainers, relevant mainstream language technology developments, and with the involved standardisation bodies.

● Harmonisation around free licensing policies should be encouraged● We want to strongly encourage all involved stake-holders to join forces in

the gradual building of a common free infrastructure of multilingual and multi-modal language ontology resources, gradually covering a wider range of AAC graphic symbol and sign language representations.

● This will not only be of major benefit for the minorities of people in need of AAC support, but also for a much wider areas of general accessibility for persons with literacy & Special Educational Needs, and all the way to mainstream education in early literacy and second language learning.

ICCHP 2012, Linz

BCIReferences – links:

- The ISO Concept Database, www.iso.org/iso/concept_database_cdb.htm

- Galinski, C., Semantic Interoperability …www.iim.fh-koeln.de/IWKolloquien/GalinskiSemO.pdf

- WordNet, Princeton Univ., http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

- EuroWordnet, www.illc.uva.nl/EuroWordNet/

- BalaNet, DanNet, ...

- ARASAAC - www.catedu.es/arasaac/

- Sclera Pictograms, www.sclera.be/index.php?taal=ENG

- Straight-Street Mulberry Symbols, http://straight-street.com/

- GNU Licenses, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

- CreativeCommons-BY-SA license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

Acknowledgement. The CCF technology has been developed with the financial contribution of the European Commission in the context of the WWAAC [2] and AEGIS [3] projects, and from the Nordic Council in the context of the SYMBERED project [18]. Thanks also to Princeton University and WordNet [8], to Blissymbolics Communication International (BCI) [4], and to Centre of Technologies for the Education (CATEDU - under the authority of the Department of Education, University, Culture

- www.aegis-project.eu - www.oaeg.eu

BCI - Blissymbolics Communication International www.blissymbolics.org

Concept Coding Framework (CCF) www.conceptcoding.org