The 1st workshop on Readability for Low Resourced Languages (RLRL 2023)

5 September 2023

Lancaster University -- Sheffield Hallam University -- King Saud University

About the workshop

Free registration is now open https://bit.ly/3pwUwlG - tickets are limited and open to non-authors.

join us for an exciting online workshop where experts in natural language processing will come together to discuss the latest research and innovative approaches to assessing the readability of low-resource languages. The workshop will take place as a free online event on September 5, 2023, and is being hosted jointly by Lancaster University, Sheffield Hallam University and King Saud University.

We welcome researchers and practitioners to submit abstract proposals of up to 500 words 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 and being in English.

Although the workshop will be conducted in English, for the first time, we are accepting submissions in a different language, starting with Arabic. Arabic speaking authors, are encouraged to submit their abstracts in Arabic. Presentations will be recorded with subtitles pre-added in by the authors. The organisers will live translate the Q&As. We plan to extend this option to other languages in future events. Due to lack of resources we are unable to provide live translation from English to Arabic during the workshop but we are open for free-of-charge solutions (please send suggestion to the organisers directly).

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. We welcome abstracts on work that is still in progress or that does not yet have conclusive results. We encourage authors to share their work at various stages of development to facilitate discussions and collaboration during the workshop.

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)

Call for Abstracts:

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

Abstract submission: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rlrl2023

Workshop URL: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/acc/rlrl2023/ 

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)