Design and Evaluation of an Automatic Text Simplification Prototype with Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Readers

Research has observed benefts from providing lexical and syntactic approaches to Automatic Text Simplifcation (ATS) to Deaf and Hard-of-hearing (DHH) readers. However, little research has explored DHH readers' design preferences and interactions with these approaches. This work frst explores the design space of ATS systems with DHH readers, identifying potential design confgurations for evaluation. Open-ended discussion of participants' design preferences reveal values informing those preferences, including maintaining reading fuency and efciency, and control over the tool. Using popular design choices from our formative study, we evaluated a prototype that provides various simplifcation types to explore DHH readers' interactions with the system. We observed potential conficts between participants' values and design preferences, such as the prototype's impact on participants' reading speed and participants' perceived need to reread simplifcations suggested by the tool. However, participants found the tool useful, showing a nuanced preference towards world-level lexical simplifcations using pop-ups. Our fndings highlight the importance of the tool's design on users' reading experiences, and provide implications for the design and evaluation of ATS prototypes with target readers.