oin us for an exciting workshop where experts in the field of natural language processing will come together to discuss the latest research and innovative approaches to assessing the readability of low-resource languages. We will delve into the development of a comprehensive Readability Framework, utilizing cutting-edge machine learning techniques to pre-process and identify key factors that impact text readability. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to discuss best practices and state-of-the-art AI-based approaches to create mathematical representations of expected readability levels at different school grade or cognitive ability levels. The workshop will also focus on utilising classifiers that are intuitive for humans to understand and adjust, enabling the analysis and improvement of the decision-making criteria. The main objectives of the workshop are three folds: a) increase awareness of the importance of readability in low-resource languages and its impact on language learning and literacy, b) discuss the challenges of readability in low-resource languages, such as limited resources and lack of standardization, and brainstorm strategies for addressing these challenges, and c) foster a community of practice among participants, allowing them to share their experiences and best practices for addressing readability issues in low-resource languages.

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit abstract proposals for talks related to the development of a Readability Framework for low-resource languages. The extended versions of the accepted abstracts will appear in the Computing Research Repository (CoRR), subject to the number of abstracts received. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Machine learning for text readability
Applications of readability assessment
Readability in low-resource languages
Comprehensibility measures
Mathematical representations of readability levels
Text simplification for low-resource languages
Readability & comprehensibility in language learning
The effects of text simplification on readability
Readability frameworks for indigenous languages
Updating readability representations

Abstracts can be either in English or Arabic (in the future we’ll try to expand to more languages)The form only allows the submission of text, with a limit of 500 words. Accepted abstracts we’ll be asked to submit extended abstracts in PDF format (English only). Please select who is going to be the presenter.

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Laurence Anthony – Faculty of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Japan
Dr Violetta Cavalli-Sforza – School of Science and Engineering at Al Akhawayn University, Morocco

Important Dates:
Due date for workshop abstract submission: July 17, 2023
Notification of abstract acceptance to authors: August 1, 2023
Workshop date: September 5, 2023 (online event)

Organisers:
Dr Mo El-Haj (SCC/DSI/UCREL, Lancaster University)
Dr Abdel-Karim Al-Tamimi (CSSE, Sheffield Hallam University)
Prof. Hend Al Khalifa (iWAN, King Saud University)