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Lisa Seeman edited this page May 20, 2019 · 14 revisions

Use case (taken from usecase page)

Those who have a severe speech and physical impairment the use of symbols to represent words is their primary means of communication for both consuming and producing information. Some users communicate through the use of symbols, rather than written text, as part of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) system. Symbol users face a wide variety of barriers to accessing web content, but one of the main challenges is a lack of standard interoperability or a mechanism for translating how a concept is represented in one symbol set to how it may be represented in another symbol set.

Solutions for Symbol

Map symbol libraries to common concepts, so that symbols can be accurately converted to text in any language and then presented to other users in their preferred symbol library. The ability to personalize a webpage and present symbols instead can help those easily understand the content being provided.

Example: In this example the author would add symbol=”name space references for the image” < span symbol="http://blisssymbolics.org/refnumber/17978" >Example

When there is more than one concept, multiple concepts can be referenced by separating them with white space. The order of multiple concepts should be subject predicate object. Both omissions and multiple triples are allowed.

Note that a unicef consortium is mapping the different open symbol libraries to a reference symbol (at blisssymbolics) to enable this. See the implementations page

Implementations options

Option 1 - Bliss URLs for each BCI symbol reference number

code: <span symbol="http://blisssymbolics.org/refnumber/17978" >Example </span> Here we use bliss refrnce nodes. (

Advantages

  • Each symbol can be mapped to words or terms. Has been mapped to other concepts libraries
  • Bliss is a very big and international - almost 6000 concepts that are in use as unique symbols concepts
  • Bliss have a process to add new symbols about every 3 months. Anyone can propose a new concept and hope to have it give a node URI in 3 months
  • They address all parts of speech
  • They are excited to help
  • makes it easy to automatically add actual symbols as well
  • licencing creative commons option http://www.blissymbolics.org/index.php/licensing
  • BCI currently maintains 9 diverse languages but is in use in many more locations, so it is not very culturally biased.

Disadvantages

  • we do not "own" Bliss
  • Long URLS

links

http://www.blissymbolics.org/index.php/resources

Option 2 - Use BCI reference number by themselves

Use only the refrence number from as used by bliss code: <span symbol="17978" >Example </span> Here we use bliss refrnce nodes.

Advantages

  • We can use any BCI reference number so we have most of the advatages of bliss
  • we are not dependent on BLISS. We can keep a document of what each number represents and add to it if we feel a need
  • shorter URLS
  • if bliss add new symbols our symbols mapping should just work, so long as diffrent symbol sets maintain their mappong

Disadvantages

  • slightly harder to automatically add actual symbols as well

Option 3 - Use terms

code: <span symbol="example" >Eg: </span> Here we use a term for each symbol. we can start off

Advantages

  • Terms are easier to read and understand
  • We could merge with purpose?

Disadvantages

  • harder to automatically add actual symbols as we need to create mapping
  • our library of terms will age (bliss keep it maintained). This is a big deal as language on the internet changes fast

Option 4 - A hybrid of terms and BIC refnumbers

code: <span symbol="example" >Example </span> code: <span symbol="17980" >Unversity</span> Here we use a term for each symbol but you can also use the bic reference, so it will grow with bliss,

Advantages

  • Terms are easier to read and understand,
  • it grows with bliss if we stop maintaining it,
  • we can also add more terms if we find bliss stops working well for us, or are missing terms

Option 5 - wordnet or other corpus

<span symbol="wd:example" >Example </span> This has a namespace for "WD" such as wordnet. Note that the sytax may be wrong - we need to work out the right way to word this

Advantages

  • Often more terms then bliss

Disadvantages

  • So many terms that brake the mapping. For example: code: <Lemma writtenForm="paternal grandfather" partOfSpeech="n"/> - will this get mapped to grandfather
  • harder to automatically add actual symbols as we need to create a mapping
  • we may need to maintain the "allowed terms"
  • often culturally biased or language biased (wordnet is English)
  • some parts of search are NOT supported so we need to augment
  • terms are not mapped to symbols

Option 6 - additional implementation - linking in metadata to a mapping file

then people can have there own symbols and map to it generically. If we have code inline the mapping is in place. We can have this work for all tokens <img href="mysymbolset.com/girl.html/>

we need:

  1. In the header add a link to the mapping files. Example syntax: <link rel="personalization" scr="mymappingsfile.html>
  2. A protocol for overrides so that you can use an image to mean something else - For example - one of the inline options above would still need to be implemented for cases where a word is used differently
  3. A format for storing the mapping in the mapping files. NOTE the syntax is not being proposed now it is just for demonstration purposes. Let us decide if we like the direction and then agree on the syntax. Example syntax (we know it is incorrect) <symbol for="mysite.org/exampletic.jpeg" value="17980"/> <destination for="mysite.org/contactus.html" value="contactUs"/> or some owl/rdf equivalent or a json version or both.... json example mysite.org/contactus.html{ context:contactUs; easyLang:"email us or phone us"; symbol:"539" }

Advantages

Disadvantages

  • maybe we should focus on this after we have the inline sorted out
  • we still need a way to put it inline as sometimes words and symbols are used to mean different things
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