Toward a Full Integration of
the Arabic Language into ‘Intel ACAT’ Assistive Platform
Type of
article: Technical report
2.Laboratory of Advanced Materials,
University of Badji Mokhtar-Annaba, Algeria
Abstract
Background:
Assisting people with severe physical
limitations with information technology has been an active area of research in
recent years. Many researchers’ efforts are built on assistive devices which
are often used to offset the impact of the resulted physical impairments.
The Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit
(ACAT) is the widely known project in this area. After being released as open
source, the developers’ community helped to integrate many languages such as
French and Spanich. However, many languages are still messing and to the best
of our knowledge, the Arabic-speaking users still can not use the platform as
no significant effort to integrate the Arabic language have been previously
undertaken.
Methods:
This paper firstly, provides an
overview on ACAT; the specifically-developed platform by Intel Labs for Dr.
Stephen Hawking. Besides, it describes the ways in which ACAT may be used to
enhance the capacity to take part in fundamental and instrumental activities of
every day living and upgrade one's autonomy in general.
Secondly, we outline our
contributions in integrating the Arabic language into the
keyboard, the intelligent predictive text engine and all interfaces of this unique and highly configurable system.
Results:
Our integration evolved after resolving many issues
and we succeeded in integrating the Arabic language in interfaces, keyboard and
word prediction engine. Most of other ACAT features (Facial gesture
recognition, Mouse
Navigation., etc) are functional.
Conclusion:
This work is
a step forward to make the intel ACAT platform completely available in Arabic
language. Therefore, Arabic-speaking patients can now get the benefits from this
platform and are able to perform common tasks such as documents editing and
management, Web surfing, writing
emails and above all, communicating with
others easily. The Arabic Text-to-speech engine integration is planned for
future works .
Keywords:Intel ACAT, Assistive Technology, Arabic language
Corresponding author:Nadji Ahmed Zakariya University of Badji Mokhtar Annaba, Algeria, Nadji.zakaria@gmail.com
Received: 26December 2018,
Accepted: 31 December, 2018, English editing: 03 January 2019 , Published: 09
January, 2019.
Screened by
iThenticate.©2017-2018 KNOWLEDGE KINGDOM PUBLISHING.
1. Introduction
The steadily increase in the
number of persons with disability worldwide is worrying , the total number of
people with one or more forms of disability, estimated by the World Health
Organization is about 1 billion [1], with up to 190 million having significant
difficulties in functioning. In Algeria, where the current population is about
42 million [2], the number of persons living with impairment is about two million according to the Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations [3].
In today's dynamic world,
life without technology is worthless, for the physically challenged persons,
Assistive Technology (AT) is used to enable and enhance their inclusion and
participation in everyday activities and
its use has become prevalent to overcome
the environmental and attitudinal barriers they face[4].
Like their counterparts who
are physically fit, Algerians with physical disabilities typically experience a lot
of impairments, including but not limited to social communication, in their
behaviors; these impairments leads to poor adaptive skills, including personal
living, and community living skills [5].
Since the definition of AT
is “any item, piece of equipment or product that is applied to secure,
increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities” [6], ATs are often
experienced as an extension of the body since they are used to improve, expand
or extend people’s performances, actions and interactions.[7]
As mentioned by Lancioni in
his work [8]: “The AT and technology-aided program required to help these
individuals might involve (a) a sensor that the individuals can activate with a
small response (e.g., a finger, lip, small head, or eyelid movement) and (b) a
computer or other electronic device that responds to micro switch activations
by delivering specific stimulation. The use of this technology aided program
can provide the individuals with the necessary support to make their small
responses functional to access and control preferred environmental
stimulation”.
In the same context, in
2015, Intel has released for free, a highly configurable open-source assistive
platform called Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT), to help people with
such physical conditions to have full access to the capabilities and
applications of their computers through very constrained interfaces suitable
for their conditions [9,10], but there’s one downside , the ACAT can be used
only in few languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and French).[11].
Through a review of the
existing literature on ACAT and after testing the platform we intend in the
first part of this work, to outline its applications and how it may be used to
increase independence, improve personal productivity, enhance the quality of
patient’s life, and identify current barriers to its effective integration in
the Algerian context with an accentuation on empowering Arabic-speaking
patients to end up autonomous and gainful individuals from standard society. In
the second part, we present the preliminary contribution of the authors, which
consists of expanding the Intel ACAT platform and make it useable for
Arabic-speaking paralyzed people by integrating the Arabic language into the keyboard,
the intelligent predictive text engine and all of its interfaces.
2. Motivation
Accessible and moderate AT access for all individuals
has been cherished as a human right inside the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities [12], however significant unmet and under
met need for AT exists [13]. The World Report on Disability appraises that just
1 out of 10 individuals approach AT: a shortage for more than 1 billion
individuals [1].
Thus, in Algeria like elsewhere,
individuals with handicaps, might be not able to have any contact with their
direct environment. Setting up such contact and creating essential types of
control of favored natural incitement would rely upon the possibility of using
their minimal response repertoire [8,14].
3. Overview on Intel ACAT
The huge quantity of assistive products and related
services is increasing exponentially as a result of technological developments.
The challenge is not only to inform people about their existence, yet in
addition about their quality, convenience, adequacy and availability. Moreover,
it ideally should be unbiased/autonomous (not impacted by business or different
interests) and bolstered by research proof and depends on client encounters and
needs [15].
Based on the above mentioned criteria, and according to [9] and [10], we found
that ACAT is the most suitable Assistive device for Algerian disabled people
with low or no income.
In fact, ACAT is an open
source platform developed by researchers at Intel Labs to help Professor Hawking,
who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) communicate by translating his
facial movements into text. ACAT is organized as a modular system; the ACAT Core
library and the ACAT Extension library give all of the ACAT’s core
functionalities, such as text-to-speech module, word prediction and input
switch trigger handling. Applications interaction with extensions is over
well-defined interfaces. Extensions raise events to notify subscribers when
something interesting happens [11]. The ACAT Resource library handles
localization of ACAT in different languages. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: ACAT core components
By sharing this platform with the public, Intel hopes
developers will expand its application to a wider range of disabilities by
adding new sensing modalities, new user interfaces (UI), word prediction and many other features to
assist in communicating via text or software command[11] , More details on ACAT
and its principal components can be found in [10], [11].
In Algeria, the Intel assistive platform ACAT can be
used in foreign languages only, mainly in French or English. The
Arabic-speaking users, who represent the majority of the patients, still
unfortunately cannot use the platform.
The system works as intended and seems very promising
for the Algerian Context as it was for other countries where tested before.
4. Integration of the Arabic language
As detailed in the
previous section, the ACAT platform is helpful for researchers and engeeiners
who are keen on creating assistive advances to individuals with inabilities not
with standing specialists who are taking a shot at new user interfaces, new
detecting modalities or word prediction and needing to investigate these
developments in the community [11].
The availability of the platform in only few languages
proves limited for Algerian users. Thus, in order to bridge this gap we took
the initiative to make the platform available in Arabic. This part describes
the different steps including (a) creating/integrating Menus, Keyboard, all
interfaces (b) configuring Scanning (The process of selecting by highlighting),
then (c) creating the database of prediction engine.
Interfaces and menus
In the first place, we
created Arabic Interfaces and Menus; we followed the ACAT developer’s guideline
[16]. The code is entirely written in
C#, using Visual 2012 and Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. Then we had to create
an Arabic library of all words and strings used in interfaces, dialogs and
menus (about 400 words), the library is named ACATResources.ar.resx, see Figure
2.
Figure 2: Example of Settings menu and
General settings dialog in Arabic
Keyboard
Thereafter, we integrated
the Arabic into the visual keyboard. It’s worth mentioning that the Arabic
alphabet contains more letters than the English one but in Arabic there are no
capital letters. Thus, several methods can be used to implement the alphabet in
ACAT. One can add rows or columns, or just add some letters as capitals of
others. We choose to add more buttons instead of using the shift button, see
Figure 3.
Figure 3: Arabic Keyboard; 1st
configuration
We had also to configure the Alphabet scanner for this
new keyboard to enable the text entry. All other scanners (for cursor
navigation, selecting, etc.) remain the same.
Word prediction
Presage, the intelligent predictive text engine
created by Matteo Vescovi, drives ACAT 's Word Prediction module[17]. It provides prediction results based on the
context for auto-completion or next-word. Prediction results are returned in
the language that is currently active. The results are obtained by looking up a
word prediction database that is created from source texts in that language.
For more information see [18].
For the integration of the
Arabic language for our case, an Arabic database was built using
"text2ngram" tool [19].
5. Results
The
integration of Arabic language (except Text-to-speech) into the ACAT platform
was difficult but successful. It offered a new opportunity
for arabic speacking users to get the
benefit from Intel ACAT more conveniently. It can address their various needs, such as
expanding socialization, independence and leisure options. They can now
communicate, navigate the web and understand all the features offered by ACAT
see Figure 4 and Figure 5.
Figure 4: Testing Facial gesture recognition after the integration
Figure 5: Browsing the internet over Facial gesture recognition under ACAT
6. Discussion
The intelligent predictive text engine will
improve the Arabic database by automatically
learning new words based on the patient
context.
For the keyboard part, as
mentioned before, several methods of implementation are possible. We can add a
dialog to permit the user to choose one of them as per individual preferences.
Diacritics could also be added in the keyboard in Arabic. One diacritic can
change the whole meaning of the sentence. We recognize the need of
new research and efforts to provide the ACAT platform for other operating
systems (ACAT runs only on Microsoft Windows).
7. Conclusions
After reporting the
potentials offered by the Intel ACAT platform to enhance the personal autonomy
and quality of life for people with acute disabilities, the barriers to its
implementation and adoption in the Algerian context were
found to include primarily the unavailibility
of the platform in the Arabic language.
In order to cross this barrier, we integrated partially the
Arabic language into the ACAT platform and discussed some
of the faced integration issues.
This integration
would make a real difference for Arabic-speaking patients by helping these 'locked-in'
individuals in daily tasks such as communicating
with others, navigating the Intenet and access to information.
This work will also provide researchers with an arabic interface to create
customized solutions as per patient needs and preferences in term of keyborad
and word and sentence prediction with diacritics.
We plan to
make the plateform fully suitable for Arabic-speaking patients in future works
and we intend to customize it further for the Algerian population and test
it intensively.
8. Conflict of interest statement
Authors declare
no conflicts of interest.
9. Authors biography
No biography
10.
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