Re: Re: programaticallylocated.doc

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 18:08:25 +1000, Jason White  
<jasonw@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> 1. To what extent, if implemented, would this concretely benefit
>    people with cognitive disabilities?

If you consider the work done by people on the Concept Coding Format, or  
more commercial projects such as widgit, bliss, and so on, and talk to  
them, it seems there are pretty strong indications that this can provide  
very concrete benefits - such as "people can understand stuff".

> 2. The proposal only addresses word (sometimes called lexical)
>    meaning, not sentence meaning. Are there any testable strategies
>    available today or in the near future that can help to clarify or
>    disambiguate larger components of a text?

If you want to see this at work there is a fairly popular product for  
Windows and Mac operating systems called babylon, which allows a user to  
right-click on a word, and look up it's meaning in a large variety fo  
dcitionaries. (I know of users who have at least 12 dictionaries, ranging  
 from translation to encyclopdia with pictures.

The difference between this and Gregg's proposal is that Gregg is  
suggesting that the author specify dictionaries they have used.

If you look at SWAP, which does allow the author to specify the  
dictionaries used, it allows clarifications or disambiguations to be  
associated with pretty much any content.

Likewise, Annotea systems permit you to annotate arbitrary content, and to  
associate it with pretty much anything.

> 3. From Gregg's proposal it appears that the author is specifying the
>    dictionaries. However, as a user I might want to take control of
>    this, for example to select dictionaries that offer translations
>    into my preferred language. It is important that if user agents or
>    assistive technologies implement this, they provide override
>    facilities.

It is trivial in several existing systems (such as Babylon or Annotea). I  
think there is no reason to believe that this cannot be generalised.

> 4. Is there a reasonable range of online dictionaries out there for
>    various languages?

What would you describe as "a reasonable range"? There are certainly many  
dictionaries available, for many of the hundreds of currently-used  
languages.

Annotea: http://www.w3.org/2001/Annotea
SWAP: A commercial product made by UBAccess - http://www.ubaccess.com -  
which is what Lisa Seeman does as a day job.
Babylon: http://www.babylon.com

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile         charles@sidar.org
Fundación Sidar             http://www.sidar.org

Received on Sunday, 8 August 2004 11:41:05 UTC