Part 1: Special Thematic Sessions

Abstract

The cognitive accessibility of digital resources is still a major research topic and is insufficiently covered by existing solutions and current accessibility guidelines. People with cognitive limitations can only use digital resources to a limited extent or not at all because they do not understand the available information or cannot orient themselves sufficiently on complex websites. The project Easy Reading tries to solve these problems by creating an environment that allows to adapt the accessibility of websites to the individual support needs of the users. The software framework developed within the scope of the project provides tools for adapting the layout and structure of web pages, for enriching the content of web pages with symbols, images and videos, or for translating web content into a different language level (e.g. plain language or simplified language). In this way, users with cognitive limitations as well as users who have difficulties understanding the original content due to their age, technical experience or migration background can work with the original sources and access all information and services resources. The Easy Reading framework is planned as a cloud based, open source and freely available support infrastructure. In this way, the framework supports the integration and use of state-of-the-art and future research and development. It combines tools for individual user-centric annotation, customization, translation and personaliza-tion. In this Special Topic Session the motivation, the project objectives and the current project results will be presented and discussed. Further contributions from similar research projects are also welcome.