Better Vocabularies for Assistive Communication Aids: Connecting Terms using Semantic Networks and Untrained Annotators

Sonya Nikolova, Jordan Boyd-Graber, Christiane Fellbaum and Perry Cook

Eleventh International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2009)
Pittsburgh, PA, USA, October 26-28, 2009

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Abstract

The difficulties of navigating vocabulary in an assistive device are exacerbated for individuals with lexical access disorders like those presented in aphasia. We use WordNet, a resource that attempts to model human semantic memory, to make it easier for users to navigate vocabulary. To correct for the sparsity of links among words, we augment WordNet with additional connections derived from human judgments of semantic similarity collected in an online experiment. We evaluate the resulting system, the visual vocabulary for aphasia (ViVA), and describe its potential to adapt to a user's profile and enable faster search and improved navigation.