Online meetup on October 29: Designing Technology for Low Literacy Individuals

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ACM Chicago

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Oct 21, 2025, 10:41:16 AMOct 21
to Chicago Chapter ACM
Dear Chicago Chapter ACM members!

Our next online meetup is scheduled  for October 29 at 6 PM

Talk title: 

Designing Technology for Low Literacy Individuals

Talk description:
 
In the U.S., over 30 million people cannot read beyond very basic text (such as recipes or driving directions). However, most AI systems are geared toward individuals with high literacy skills. Two questions arise from this:

Is this a divide worth tackling?
Can we rely on the same one-size-fits-all approaches that large language models (LLMs) provide?
This talk focuses on AI interfaces for individuals with low literacy. In particular, it presents one we built for breast cancer survivorship education, which we tested with a few users to gather first impressions.
We are quickly realizing that low-literacy individuals are not a monolith. Perhaps we don’t need a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather a more nuanced approach—one that leverages large language models as well as cultural models.

Speaker:

Dr. Francisco Iacobelli is a computer scientist whose research focuses on the intersection of human-computer interaction, equitable AI, and health disparities. In particular, his work explores the application of artificial intelligence in systems purposefully designed for low-literacy Latino populations. This includes research on language models tailored to minority communities, as well as the development of culturally appropriate conversational agents aimed at improving outcomes in these populations.
He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Informatics and Data Science and the Department of Surgery at Loyola University Chicago.

To learn more and register, please visit our meetup page:


Thank you!

Hettie Dombrovskaya, 

ACM Chicago Chapter Communications Chair


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