Computer-Assisted Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CA-AAC) - AAC vocabulary standardisation and harmonisation - Mats Lundälv

1. BCI
Blissymbolics Communication International
AAC Vocabulary Standardisation
and Harmonisation
- the CCF and BCI Experiences
Mats Lundälv and Sandra Derbring,
DART (Sahlgrenska Univ. Hospital), Göteborg, Sweden
ICCHP 2012, Linz

2. Overview BCI
1. Background
a) The Concept Coding Framework
b) The Blissymbolics Vocabulary
2. Some experiences of Early Standardisation
and Harmonisation Efforts
3. Licensing Issues
4. Conclusions – Future Perspectives
5. References - Links
ICCHP 2012, Linz

3. Background
BCI
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

4. Background
The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) BCI
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

5. Background
The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) BCI
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

6. Background
The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) – what? BCI
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

7. Background
The Concept Coding Framework (CCF) – how? BCI
ICCHP 2012, Linz

8. Background
The Blissymbolics Language and Vocabulary BCI
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

9. Background
The Blissymbolics Language and Vocabulary BCI
ICCHP 2012, Linz

10. Some experiences from the CCF vocabualry
harmonisation efforts … BCI
… complications involved in mapping symbol
vocabularies via concept codes to a lexical
ontology resource like WordNet.
ICCHP 2012, Linz

11. Populating the CCF databases:
BCI
●
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

12. Experiences of the CCF and BCI work:
BCI
●
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

13. Licensing:
BCI
●
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

14. Licensing:
BCI
●
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

15. Conclusions – Future Perspectives:
BCI
●
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

16. References – links:
BCI
- 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/
- www.aegis-project.eu - EuroWordnet, www.illc.uva.nl/EuroWordNet/
- www.oaeg.eu - BalaNet, DanNet, ...
- ARASAAC - www.catedu.es/arasaac/
Concept Coding Framework (CCF) - Sclera Pictograms, www.sclera.be/index.php?taal=ENG
www.conceptcoding.org
- Straight-Street Mulberry Symbols,
http://straight-street.com/
BCI - Blissymbolics
- GNU Licenses, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
Communication International
www.blissymbolics.org - 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
ICCHP 2012, Linz