Oliver Alonzo

research

My research includes the application of automatic text simplification tools to assist online reading by people who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing, as well as tools to assist American Sign Language learners. I focus on the user-centric design and evaluation of such tools, as well as the evaluation metrics of the performance of underlying technologies that power them.

fun facts

I play a few instruments, including guitar and piano, and I also sing. I have also performed in a few musical theatre productions, and short films. Off the spotlight, I enjoy doing black & white photography.

I am fluent in Spanish and English, and I am in the process of learning Portuguese and American Sign Language.

selected publications

See publications for a full list.

CHI

Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Complexity of Simplified Texts among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Adults at Different Literacy Levels

Alonzo, Oliver, Trussell, Jessica, Dingman, Becca, and Huenerfauth, Matt

In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2021

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CHI

Automatic Text Simplification Tools for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Adults: Benefits of Lexical Simplification and Providing Users with Autonomy

Alonzo, Oliver, Seita, Matthew, Glasser, Abraham, and Huenerfauth, Matt

In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2020

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ASSETS

Effect of Automatic Sign Recognition Performance on the Usability of Video-Based Search Interfaces for Sign Language Dictionaries

Alonzo, Oliver, Glasser, Abraham, and Huenerfauth, Matt

In The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility 2019

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Researchers have investigated various methods to help users search for the meaning of an unfamiliar word in American Sign Language (ASL). Some are based on sign-recognition technology, e.g. a user performs a word into a webcam and obtains a list of possible matches in the dictionary. However, developers of such technology report the performance of their systems inconsistently, and prior research has not examined the relationship between the performance of search technology and users' subjective judgements for this task. We conducted two studies using a Wizard-of-Oz prototype of a webcam-based ASL dictionary search system to investigate the relationship between the performance of such a system and user judgements. We found that in addition to the position of the desired word in a list of results, which is what is often reported in literature; the similarity of the other words in the results list also affected users' judgements of the system. We also found that metrics that incorporate the precision of the overall list correlated better with users' judgements than did metrics currently reported in prior ASL dictionary research.
ASSETS

Reading Experiences and Interest in Reading-Assistance Tools Among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Computing Professionals

Alonzo, Oliver, Elliot, Lisa, Dingman, Becca, and Huenerfauth, Matt

In The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility 2020

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news

Jul 14, 2021	I was selected to participate in the ASSETS’21 Doctoral Consortium!
Jun 15, 2021	The extension of our ASSETS’19 paper, led by Saad Hassan this time, was accepted into TACCESS 🎉
May 24, 2021	I joined Adobe Research as an HCI Research Intern for the summer, where I will be working with Ding Li!