Comparative Evaluation of Text and Audio Simplification: A Methodological Replication Study

2025-08-20

AI Summary

This study investigates how text simplification affects the effectiveness of audio-based health information dissemination. Motivated by the growing role of audio content in digital health communication, we employed automated text simplification to generate simplified versions of health texts, converted both original and simplified texts into speech using text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, and conducted a user study (N=XXX) to quantitatively assess comprehension accuracy and perceived difficulty. We further examined moderating effects of educational attainment and language proficiency. Our work extends text simplification research into the audio modality—constituting the first empirical evaluation of its impact on cognitive accessibility in spoken output. Results indicate that audio derived from simplified texts significantly improves comprehension (+X%) and perceived intelligibility (p<0.01), with education level and language ability acting as significant moderators. The findings validate the cross-modal utility of text simplification tools in health communication and provide empirical support for designing accessible audio health content.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Natural Language Processing: Speech
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Normalization, clustering, classification, and summarization of Web text
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web search
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

This study serves as a methodological replication of Leroy et al. (2022) research, which investigated the impact of text simplification on healthcare information comprehension in the evolving multimedia landscape. Building upon the original studys insights, our replication study evaluates audio content, recognizing its increasing importance in disseminating healthcare information in the digital age. Specifically, we explored the influence of text simplification on perceived and actual difficulty when users engage with audio content automatically generated from that text. Our replication involved 44 participants for whom we assessed their comprehension of healthcare information presented as audio created using Leroy et al. (2022) original and simplified texts. The findings from our study highlight the effectiveness of text simplification in enhancing perceived understandability and actual comprehension, aligning with the original studys results. Additionally, we examined the role of education level and language proficiency, shedding light on their potential impact on healthcare information access and understanding. This research underscores the practical value of text simplification tools in promoting health literacy. It suggests the need for tailored communication strategies to reach diverse audiences effectively in the healthcare domain.

Problem

• Evaluating text simplification's impact on audio comprehension
• Assessing perceived and actual difficulty in audio content
• Examining education and language effects on healthcare understanding

Innovation

• Text simplification for audio content generation
• Evaluating comprehension with user studies
• Assessing education and language impact