Attempts have been made in Sweden to increase readability for texts addressed to the public, and ongoing projects are still being conducted by disability associations, private companies and Swedish authorities. In this thesis project, we explore automatic approaches to increase readability trough text simplification and keyphrase extraction, with the goal of facilitating text comprehension and readability for people with reading difficulties. A combination of handwritten rules and monolingual machine translation was used to simplify the syntactic and lexical content of Swedish texts, and noun phrases were extracted to provide the reader with a short summary of the textual content. A user evaluation was conducted to compare the original and the simplified version of the same text. Several texts and their simplified versions were also evaluated using established readability metrics. Although a manual evaluation of the result showed that the implemented rules generally worked as intended on the sentences that were targeted, the results from the user evaluation and readability metrics did not show improvements. We believe that further additions to the rule set, targeting a wider range of linguistic structures, have the potential to improve the results.

This thesis presents the design and implementation of an extension of the self-hosted Miking compiler to enable the generation of JavaScript code for different runtime environments and web browsers. Miking is a framework for developing domain-specific and general-purpose programming languages through sound language fragment composition, among other things, to create efficient compilers. Miking Core encapsulates a meta-language called Miking Lang and a fundamental functional Miking Expression language which Miking Lang itself is also lowered to. The presented backend translates Miking expressions into semantically equivalent effective, readable, sound, and correct JavaScript programs. In this report, development challenges, implementation methods, and techniques are also discussed and evaluated along with a review of the final compiler backend. Likewise, details on JavaScript-specific optimizations and pattern-matching compilation are presented, including how tail recursion is handled to enable complex Miking programs to be compiled into flexible and efficient JavaScript. / Detta examensarbete presenterar design och implementation för utveckling av Miking-kompilatorn, med syfte att möjliggöra generering av JavaScript-kod för olika exekveringsmiljöer och webbläsare. Miking är ett ramverk för att utveckla domänspecifika och generella programmeringsspråk genom sund komposition av språksfragment som kan används för att skapa effektiva kompilatorer. Miking Core ramverket innehåller ett metaspråk kallat Miking Lang, vilket ”sänks” till det mer grundläggande funktionella Miking Expression-språket. ”Sänkning” betyder i huvudsak att skriva om mer komplexa semantiska konstruktioner i form av enklare. Den backend som presenteras översätter Miking-uttryck till semantiskt ekvivalenta JavaScript program som också är effektiva, läsbara, sunda och korrekta. I denna rapport diskuteras och utvärderas även utvecklingsutmaningar, implementeringsmetod och andra tekniker som har använts under arbetet. På samma sätt presenteras detaljer om JavaScript-specifika optimeringar och mönstermatchningskompilering, inklusive hur svansrekursion hanteras för att möjliggöra kompilering av komplexa Miking-program till flexibel och effektiv JavaScript med hjälp av ”trampoline” teknik.

This study analyses four texts for Swedish as a Second Language in an Adult Education textbook published in 2018. The target group has passed the first level of beginners’ studies. The study concerns how the texts represent different life conditions in general and more specifically how otherness is shown in the Swedish majority society. It also concerns how the texts adjust to the learners’ language progression in the course syllabuses. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used. The results of this study show that the textbook has a serious approach in that the analysed texts represent important and interesting perspectives in the curriculum. The fictional texts show a varied language and content – not too difficult to understand. The two factual texts though are far above the intended language level of the course, which has an excluding effect. These two texts could also – from a critical discourse perspective – be said to cause a feeling of other-ness and exclusion among the L2-readers and are therefore not consistent with the common values in the curriculum.

Press releases play a key role in today’s news production by being public statements of newsworthy content that function as a pre-formulation of news. Press releases originate from a wide range of actors, and a common goal is for them to reach a high societal impact. This thesis examines how Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques can be successful in giving feedback to press release authors that help enhance the content and quality of their texts. This could, in turn, contribute to increased impact. To examine this, the research question is divided into two parts. The first part examines how content-perception feedback can contribute to improving press releases. This is examined by the development of a web tool where user- written press releases get analyzed. The analysis consists of a readability assessment using the LIX metric and linguistic bias detection of weasel words and peacock words through rule-based sentiment analysis. The user experiences and opinions are evaluated through an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The second part of the research question examines how trending topic information can contribute to improving press releases. This part is examined theoretically based on a literature review of state-of-the- art methods and qualitatively by gathering opinions from press release authors in the previously mentioned questionnaire and interviews. Based on the results, it is identified that for content-perception feedback, it is especially lesser experienced authors and scientific content aimed at the general public that would achieve improved text quality from objective readability assessment and detection of biased expressions. Nevertheless, most of the evaluation participants were more satisfied with their press releases after editing based on the readability feedback, and all participants with biased words in their texts reported that the detection led to positive changes resulting in improved text quality. As for the theoretical part, it is considered that both text quality and the number of publications increase when writing about trending topics. To give authors trending topic information on a detailed level is indicated to be the most helpful. / Aktörer som sträcker sig från privata företag till mydigheter och forskare använder pressmeddelanden för att offentligt delge information med nyhetsvärde. Dessa pressmeddelanden spelar därefter en nyckelroll i dagens nyhetsproduktion genom att förformulera nyheter och eftersträvar därför att hålla en viss språklig nivå. För att förbättra kvalitet och innehåll i pressmeddelanden undersöker detta examensarbete hur språkteknologisk textanalys och återkoppling till författare kan stödja dem i att förbättra sina texter. Denna frågeställning undersöks i två delar, en tillämpad del och en teoretisk del. Den tillämpade delen undersöker hur återkoppling kring innehållsuppfattning kan förbättra pressmeddelanden. Ett webb-baserat verktyg utvecklades där användare kan skriva in pressmeddelanden och få dessa analyserade. Analysen baseras på läsbarhet som bedöms med hjälp av måttet LIX samt språklig bias (partiska uttryck) i form av weasel words (vessleord) och peacock words (påfågelord) som detekteras genom regelbaserad sentimentanalys. Denna del utvärderades kvalitativt genom en enkätundersökning till användarna samt djupintervjuer. Den teoretiska delen av frågeställningen undersöker hur information om trendande ämnen kan bidra till att förbättra pressmeddelanden. Undersökningen genomfördes som en litteraturstudie och utvärderades kvalitativt genom att sammanställa åsikter från yrkesverksamma som arbetar med pressmeddelanden i enkätundersökningen och djupintervjuerna som beskrevs ovan. Resultaten indikerar att för feedback om innehållsuppfattning är det särskilt mindre erfarna författare och vetenskapligt innehåll riktat till allmänheten som skulle uppnå förbättrad textkvalitet till följd av läsbarhetsbedömning och upptäckt av partiska uttryck. Samtidigt var en majoritet av deltagarna i utvärderingen mer nöjda med sina pressmeddelanden efter redigering baserat på läsbarhetsfeedbacken. Dessutom rapporterade alla deltagare med partiska uttryck i sina texter att upptäckten ledde till positiva förändringar som resulterade i förbättrad textkvalitet. Gällande den teoretiska delen anses både textkvaliteten och antalet publikationer öka för pressmeddelnanden om trendande ämnen. Att ge författare information om trendande ämnen på en detaljerad nivå indikeras vara det mest hjälpsamma.

Approximately 20–25 percent of the Swedish population experience difficulties with reading and writing, and 5–8 percent have dyslexia. Despite this and the widespread use of mobile phones, research on typographic design is primarily focused on the general population, creating a knowledge gap regarding how design decisions can affect individuals with dyslexia. Therefore the purpose of this study was to deepen the understanding of how different fonts and typographic elements on mobile screens affect readability for people with dyslexia. Participants were recruited from various Facebook groups using a subjective and snowball sampling method, including a group of individuals with dyslexia and a comparative control group. The survey was designed based on previous research and was conducted online, including a readability test. The readability test consisted of nine images with short texts presenting different typographic conditions, and respondents assessed the readability on a five-point scale. Subsequently, the data were processed to identify patterns and correlations. The study was based on theoretical perspectives on typography, dyslexia, and cognitive load theory. The results showed that sans-serif fonts, especially Verdana, performed bestand were considered the most readable by both respondents with and without dyslexia. Additionally, the study found that custom fonts designed for dyslexia do not necessarily improve readability. This underscores the importance of choosing simple, well-known fonts to facilitate reading for people with dyslexia. The conclusions emphasized the need to minimize cognitive load and select fonts with a simpler design to promote readability. Lastly, the study also identified increased letter spacing as a strategy to improve readability on mobile screens for people with dyslexia. / Cirka 20–25 procent av Sveriges befolkning upplever läs- och skrivsvårigheter, och 5–8procent har dyslexi. Trots detta och den breda användningen av mobiltelefoner är forskningen om typografisk design främst inriktad på den generella allmänheten, vilket skapar en kunskapslucka för hur designbeslut kan påverka personer med dyslexi. Syftet med studien är att fördjupa förståelsen för hur olika typsnitt och typografiska element på mobilskärmar påverkar läsbarheten för personer med dyslexi. Genom ett subjektivt och snöbollsurval rekryterades deltagare från olika Facebookgrupper, både personer med dyslexi och en jämförande kontrollgrupp. Enkäten utformades med hjälp av tidigare forskning och genomfördes online, vilken inkluderade ett läsbarhetstest. Läsbarhetstestet bestod av nio bilder med korta texter med olika typografiska förhållanden, där respondenterna bedömde läsbarheten på en femgradig skala. Därefter bearbetades data för att identifiera mönster och samband. Studien utgick från teoretiska perspektiv om typografi, dyslexi samt kognitiv belastningsteori. Resultaten visade att sans-serif typsnitt, särskilt Verdana, presterade bäst och ansågs vara mest lättlästa av både respondenter med och utan dyslexi. Dessutom visade studien att specialanpassade typsnitt för dyslexi inte nödvändigtvis förbättrar läsbarheten. Det understryker vikten av att välja enkla och välkända typsnitt för att underlätta läsning för personer med dyslexi. Slutsatserna betonade behovet av att minimera den kognitiva belastningen och att välja typsnitt med en enklare design för att främja läsbarhet. Slutligen identifierade även studien ökat bokstavsavstånd som en strategi för att förbättra läsbarheten på mobilskärmar för personer med dyslexi.

Availability of internet to a wide audiences has revolutionized how business is performed. Businesses now use e-commerce to trade products and services. The growth of e-commerce has been dramatically rapid among developed countries. Therefore, the adoption of e-commerce platforms is studied in these countries. Meanwhile less attentions has been given to developing countries. Developing countries can take advantage of lessons learned in the developed countries. One of the major success factors of e-commerce platforms in developed countries is improving the usability of e-commerce platform by considering user’s preferences. User preferences can be defined as feelings and attitudes of users for the interface and functional design of the ecommerce platform. This influences user’s decision and behavior. Considering the users preferences within an e-commerce platform enhances user’s satisfaction and increases user’s loyalty to the platform. To evaluate the user preferences a selection of usability factors are usually studied. Avicenna Research Institute (ARI) is currently considering the development of an e-commerce platform. For this ARI is investigating ways to consider users preferences in the design. This study aims to satisfy this goal. In this study previous research are analyzed, user’s preferences are identified, common used e-commerce platforms are investigated, and ARI’s perspective is included in the analysis. Using these information a set of recommendations on how to improve the usability of an e-commerce platform is given. For this task based approaches are used in form of participatory heuristic evaluation and observations. Interview is used to obtain ARI’s perspective on usability. The study has identified ten usability factors affecting the usability of the e-commerce platform based on user’s preferences. These include consistency, learnability, navigability, simplicity, readability, content relevance, supportability, interactivity, credibility, and telepresence. In addition a set of eighty evaluation criteria are presented to evaluate these factors. Using a qualitative approach, the study has analyzed all these factors in a multiple-case study. The analysis includes input from the users in form of observations, comments and questionnaire. This is combined with input from ARI in form of interviews. Finally the study concludes by providing a path for future research.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of U.S. firms’ geographic location, whether urban or rural, on their corporate disclosure and governance practices. An “urban” firm is one that is headquartered in a large metropolitan area; whereas, a “rural” firm is one that is headquartered some distance from any metropolitan area. Specifically, the study examines whether there are different stock market reactions to urban and rural firms around key event dates relative to the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on July 30, 2002. Also, the readability and linguistic style in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) section of public company’s annual reports (Form 10-K) to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are investigated to determine whether urban and rural firms communicate information differently to investors.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-22T17:26:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_Eduardo_Revisado.pdf: 3489154 bytes, checksum: 3c327ee0bc47d79cd4af46e065105650 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-29 / Text retrieved from the Internet through Google and Yahoo queries are evaluated using Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, a simple assessment measure of text readability. This kind of metrics were created to help writers to evaluate their text, and recently in automatic text simplification for undercapable readers. In this work we apply these metrics to documents freely retrieved from the Internet, seeking to find correlations between legibility and relevance acknowledged to then by search engines. The initial premise guiding the comparison between readability and relevance is the statement known as Occam s Principle, or Principle of Economy. This study employs Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level in text documents retrieved from the Internet through search-engines queries and correlate it with the position. It was found a centralist trend in the texts recovered. The centralist tendency mean that the average spacing of groups of files from the average of the category they belong is meaningfull. With this measure is possible to establish a correlation between relevance and legibility, and also, to detect diferences in the way both search engines derive their relevance calculation. A subsequent experiment seeks to determine whether the measure of legibility can be employed to assist him or her choosing a document combined with original search engine ranking and if it is useful as advance information for choice and user navigation. In a final experiment, based on previously obtained knowledge, a comparison between Wikipedia and Britannica encyclopedias by employing the metric of understandability Flesch-Kincaid / Textos recuperados da Internet por interm´edio de consultas ao Google e Yahoo s ao analisados segundo uma m´etrica simples de avaliac¸ ao de inteligibilidade textual. Tais m´etricas foram criadas para orientar a produc¸ ao textual e recentemente tamb´em foram empregadas em simplificadores textuais autom´aticos experimentais para leitores inexperientes. Nesse trabalho aplicam-se essas m´etricas a texto originais livres, recuperados da Internet, para buscar correlacionar o grau de inteligibilidade textual com a relev ancia que lhes ´e conferida pelos buscadores utilizados. A premissa inicial a estimular a comparac¸ ao entre inteligibilidade e relev ancia ´e o enunciado conhecido como Princ´ıpio de Occam, ou princ´ıpio da economia. Observa-se uma tend encia centralista que ocorre a partir do pequeno afastamento m´edio dos grupos de arquivos melhor colocados no ranking em relac¸ ao `a m´edia da categoria a que pertencem. ´E com a medida do afastamento m´edio que se consegue verificar correlac¸ ao com a posic¸ ao do arquivo no ranking e ´e tamb´em com essa medida que se consegue registrar diferenc¸as entre o m´etodo de calcular a relev ancia do Google e do Yahoo. Um experimento que decorre do primeiro estudo procura determinar se a medida de inteligibilidade pode ser empregada para auxiliar o usu´ario da Internet a escolher arquivos mais simples ou se a sua indicac¸ ao junto `a listagem de links recuperados ´e ´util e informativa para a escolha e navegac¸ ao do usu´ario. Em um experimento final, embasado no conhecimento previamente obtido, s ao comparadas as enciclop´edias Brit anica eWikip´edia por meio do emprego da m´etrica de inteligibilidade Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

書是社會文明的載體，是人類進步的階梯。電腦、網路的飛速發展，使得電子書引發了新一輪的書籍革命。隨著智慧型手機的出現，用手機閱讀電子書以前方便靈活，充分利用零散時間，因此受到年輕人的追捧。但是，電子書本身也存在各樣的問題，諸如不符合人們的閱讀習慣，以及產業鏈的不成熟等。因此，調查使用者的行為模式和對於電子書的喜好，以瞭解使用者對電子書的看法及接受度是本文研究的重點，本研究透過UTAUT模式探討績效期望、付出期望、社會影響、輔助條件等自變數對於使用意圖與使用行為的影響力和預測力。本研究採取問卷調查的方式，在多個網路論壇上發放，共收回問卷352份，其中剔除無效問卷後得到有效樣本計232份，有效的樣本回收率達65.9%。究結果顯示，受試者大多擁有智慧型手機（77%），使用時多以娛樂為目的（55%），僅以工作為目的者最少（4%），大多偶爾閱讀（47%），多數人未曾花錢下載付費電子書（86%）。在電子書使用經驗方面，多數受試者使用電子書不到1年（42%），在使用智慧型手機方面，同樣是使用不到1年時間者居多（60%），而使用智慧型手機閱讀電子書方面，同樣是不足1年最多（68%）。 受試者使用智慧型手機閱讀電子書之績效期望、輔助條件、付出期望等各構面對使用意圖及使用行為的預測達到顯著水準，而社會影響構面與使用經驗干擾變數則影響力未達顯著。 / Books are the vehicle for social civilization and the ladder of human progress. Due to the rapid development of computers and the Internet, electronic books (ebooks) have triggered a new round of the book revolution. With the emergence of smartphones, using mobile phones to read ebooks has become convenient, flexible, and a way to make full use of scattered bits of time. Therefore, the use of smartphones for such purposes has been pursued by young people. However, ebooks present various problems of their own, such as incompatibility with individual reading habits and the immaturity of the industrial chain. Thus, the focus of this study was to survey user behavioral models and affinity for ebooks to understand users views on and degree of acceptance of ebooks. This study used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to investigate the influence and predictive power of the following independent variables on usage intention and usage behavior: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. Research results showed that a majority of respondents had smartphones (77 %). Respondents who used their phones mostly for entertainment purposes composed the largest category (55 %), while those who used their phones only for work purposes formed the smallest category (4 %). A large percentage occasionally read ebooks (47 %), but most respondents had never spent money on downloading payable ebooks (86 %). Regarding experience using ebooks, most respondents had used ebooks for under one year (42 %). Regarding experience using smart phones, the group that had used smart phones for less than one year was also the largest (60 %); a high percentage of users (68 %) had been using smart phones to read ebooks for less than one year. The predictive power of performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and effort expectancy on usage intention and usage behavior with regard to using smartphones to read ebooks achieved a level of significance. As for social influence and moderator experience, the predictive power didn’t reach a level of significance.

Idag använder allt fler människor sina smartphones för att surfa och använda tjänster online. Detta innebär att en stor del text läses på små skärmar. Detta arbete handlar om hur text bäst utformas och struktureras för att enklast kunna läsas och uppfattas på en mobilskärm. Faktorer som berörs är typgrad, ljusrum, textlängd, teckensnittsklass, radlängd, bild i text och kontrastverkan. Arbetet utgår från en normativ, svensk person utan funktionsnedsättningar. Arbetet är grundat på litteratur, egna analyser, intervjuer med branschfolk, enkätundersökning och test med fokusgrupp. Resultatet blev att en text på smartphone bäst utformas med flera styckesindelningar i form av blankrader, med bilder där bilden tillför något i informativt syfte och textlängd baserat på ämneskategori. Bilden bör sättas ovanför brödtexten. Längre texter ska sättas med scrollfunktion. Kontrast har stor betydelse på mobiltelefoner, texter går bra att läsa även när de är satta negativt. Teckensnittsklass är enligt resultatet av denna rapport inte av betydelse. Både seriff och sanserif kan läsas utan problem på smartphones. Typgraden bör förstoras något i förhållande till telefonens default-inställningar. På grund av att text på skärm inte stödjer avstavningar rekommenderas korta ord där det är möjligt för att förhindra en allt för hackig högerkant. / This research focuses on the issue of how to best structure text on a Smartphone screen. The factors involved in this research are text size, white space, text and line lengths, serif and sans serif fonts, pictures in text and contrast.  The methodology of our research is based on a normative Swedish able-bodied person, as well as on relevant literature, personal analyses, interviews with people in the trade, an online survey, and a test performed with a focus group. The results are that a text written for Smartphones is best structured with: several paragraph divisions made with blank lines, with pictures where the picture has an informational purpose, and text length based on category of subject. The picture should be placed above the body text. Longer texts should be set with a scroll-function. Contrast is of great importance on mobile phones as texts can be read properly even when set in negative. In addition, using serif or sans serif is of no importance. According to the results both serif and sans serif can be read without difficulties on a Smartphone. Text size should be slightly enlarged in relation to the default settings on the mobile device. Since word division is not supported on screen, short words are recommended when possible to prevent a highly uneven right end.