Paper Reading #19

Comments

Reference Information
Title - Vocabulary Navigation Made Easier
Author - Sonya Nikolova, Xiaojuan Ma, Marilyn Tremaine, Perry Cook
IUI 2010

Summary
   In this paper, a system that would help vocabulary navigation  a lot faster. The goal was to find words a lot easier, especially for those users that have lexical access disorders. Right now, inferior systems, simply use categories of words into hierarchical systems. Which means a user has to know exactly which category category this word belongs in order to locate this word. ViVa, Visual Vocabulary for Aphasia system is used here. Words would be organized into a semantic type network. Past vocabulary searches and human associations help to make relations. The software attempts to structure the search engine toward how the brain structures searches on words.

Discussion

I really enjoyed reading this paper about the vocabulary system. I'm sure it is very hard for lexical impaired users to search and use the computer efficiently. It seems that it would be very useful for dyslexic users. I also liked that they changed the search method from hierarchical structure to a more semantcic type. It seems that if the users are having trouble with lexical information that restricting the search more would be very inefficient. I really like the idea of technology being used more and more to help those who are physically impaired.