FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS
NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING FOR COMMUNICATION AIDS
ACL/EACL'97 Workshop
Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED)
Madrid, Spain
July 12th, 1997
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/users/aac/clworkshop.html
Many people have some sort of disability which impairs their ability
to communicate. Work in alternative and augmentative communication
(AAC) devices attempts to address this need. For example, people who
have speech impairments may use a text-to-speech generator, or a
system which synthesises speech based on input using an alternative
symbol system. Prosthetic devices of this sort must be usable in a
great variety of settings. They should enable the user to be a full
participant in ordinary conversations, to lead transactional
encounters and to prepare speech for more formal occasions. The
extent to which this is possible depends on a number of factors, both
physical and cognitive. The speech impairment may be due to a
physical disability which has no effect on the person's linguistic
ability, or it may be due to a cognitive, language impairment.
Often, some combination of physical and cognitive disabilities is
involved. Other communication aids include systems designed for deaf
users and text-to-speech devices for people with vision impairments.
NLP techniques are currently in use in such devices but substantial
improvement in performance is clearly possible. AAC provides the NLP
researcher with relatively tractable applications of potential
utility to millions of people worldwide. The aim of the workshop is
to provide a forum in which researchers in communication aids for
people with disabilities can discuss the problems involved in these
applications and the solutions being investigated in current
research. We also hope that researchers in all areas of CL/NLP will
participate, to discuss ways in which their own work could
contribute, even if they are not currently working on these
applications.
We seek papers which describe the utilisation of NLP in communication
aids, including AAC devices for the speech and language-impaired,
sign language interpretation and translation, and intelligent
text-readers for blind people. We would also welcome contributions
which describe the use of NLP techniques in aids for rehabilitation
and training for language impairment. Participation by NLP
researchers whose work might be applied in these areas is encouraged,
possibly including:
- statistical or symbolic techniques for word prediction (for
speeding input to text-to-speech devices)
- lexical resources which can be utilised for communication aids
(e.g. for text retrieval of fixed messages)
- language generation from partial input (e.g. icons, templates,
telegraphic text)
- aids for text comprehension
- speech synthesis geared to the needs of the blind or language impaired
These topics are intended as suggestions only: contributions would be
welcome from any researchers with an interest in applying CL/NLP
techniques to aid people with disabilities.
SUBMISSION OF PAPERS
Papers should be previously unpublished: a paper accepted for
presentation at this workshop cannot be presented or have been
presented at any other meeting with published proceedings. Parallel
submission is allowed; however if your paper is accepted for this
workshop and you decide to present it here, we will ask you to
withdraw it from any other events.
Papers will be reviewed by the program committee, with additional
reviewers being recruited if necessary. Papers must not exceed 3200
words (excluding references). Electronic submission is strongly
preferred, either as a self-contained LaTeX file or PostScript. Hard
copy submissions should include eight copies of the paper. Final
versions of accepted papers will be required in LaTeX using a
standard submission style (to be made available via WWW/ftp). Papers
will be published in the workshop proceedings: if the papers
submitted are of a sufficiently high quality, a book may subsequently
be produced by CSLI Publications.
We welcome presentations which include system demonstrations or video
- audio-visual requirements should be described when the paper is
submitted.
Since attendance at the workshop will be limited to a total of about
40 people, potential participants who do not wish to present a paper
should send a brief (max 100 word) description of interest to the
address below by April 28th. Potential participants who would like
an overview of AAC before the workshop might want to consult: McCoy
et al, 1990: `Applying Natural Language Processing techniques to
Augmentative communication systems' in proceedings of Coling-90
and Edwards (editor), 1995: `Extra-ordinary human-computer
interaction' Cambridge University Press which contains several
relevant papers. Also see
http://alpha.mic.dundee.ac.uk/~slanger/workshop.html for abstracts of
the recent workshop on NLP and communication aids for non-speaking
people.
DEADLINES
Submissions due March 28th 1997
Statements of interest due April 28th 1997
Authors notified (by email) April 28th 1997
Final versions due May 30th 1997
ADDRESS FOR PAPERS AND STATEMENTS OF INTEREST
Ann Copestake
CSLI
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford
CA 94305-4115
USA
tel: +1 415 725 2312
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Ted Briscoe, University of Cambridge
Ann Copestake, Stanford University
Marianne Hickey, University of Dundee
Sheri Hunnicutt, KTH
Stefan Langer, University of Dundee
Kathleen McCoy, University of Delaware
Sira E. Palazuelos-Cagigas, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
OTHER INFORMATION
Venue, accommodation etc will be as for the main ACL/EACL conference,
for which workshop participants will be required to register. See:
http://horacio.ieec.uned.es/cl97/
Further information about the workshop itself will be available via:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/users/aac/clworkshop