Content Clarifier - an application that aims to improve the quality of life of autists

IBM specialists are working to improve the quality of life of autists and people with other types of cognitive disorders. Autism is a disorder that occurs as a result of a disruption in the normal development of the brain. It is characterized by a pronounced lack of social interaction and communication, repetitive actions and limited interests of autists. According to statistics, for 1 child with autism, there are 68 children without disorders of this type.

With the improvement of computing systems, we can talk about the possibility of analyzing human genes with the detection of deviations in DNA, which lead to autism. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to talk about the "cure" of this disorder. But now it is important to another - to improve the quality of life of autists. That is what the efforts of the participants in the new project of IBM are aimed at.

The corporation has developed a Content Clarifier application based on the Bluemix platform. This application was created by IBM Accessibility Research. It is a powerful combination of machine learning, cognitive technology and language recognition. The system analyzes the source of information, leaving only important data and sifting outsiders.
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The point is that a person with autism is quite difficult to use our usual sources of information - newspapers, magazines, articles on the Internet. There are too many side data that do not give an autist the opportunity to understand what the material is about. The service mentioned above focuses on the main thing, allowing a person with autism to get acquainted with the necessary information.

“Using cloud infrastructure and cognitive computing, Content Clarifier analyzes and“ compresses ”content, making the source language more clear. For example, euphemisms are removed, relevant content is added (maps, web resources, phonetic maps). This greatly simplifies the reading task by increasing the overall degree of understanding of the material, ”says Will Scott, the project manager.


Autistic people are sometimes dyslexic at an early age, that is, they read without understanding the meaning of what they read. Service from IBM allows you to avoid these problems, or at least alleviate their impact on human life. By the way, Content Clarifier works with the Tone Analyzer service, which allows you to better understand the emotional coloring and style of the text.

Below are examples of the original source and the text processed by the service.









As part of the project, IBM also collaborates with other organizations, including research organizations. One example of collaboration is the University of Massachusetts in Boston. The task of the team of specialists of this university is to study the effectiveness of Content Clarifier.

According to the developers, this service has other methods of application besides the preparation of materials for autists. It can be help in learning languages, simplifying complex texts and more.