Text Modification for Bulgarian Sign Language Users

The paper discusses the main issues regarding the reading skills and comprehension proficiency in written Bulgarian of people with communication difficulties, and deaf people, in particular. We consider several key components of text comprehension which pose a challenge for deaf readers and propose a rule-based system for automatic modification of Bulgarian texts intended to facilitate comprehension by deaf people, to assist education, etc. In order to demonstrate the benefits of such a system and to evaluate its performance, we have carried out a study among a group of deaf people who use Bulgarian Sign Language (BulSL) as their primary language (primary BulSL users), which compares the comprehensibility of original texts and their modified versions. The results shows a considerable improvement in readability when using modified texts, but at the same time demonstrates that the level of comprehension is still low, and that a complex set of modifications will have to be implemented to attain satisfactory results.