The DSA in Focus at a CLIB 2026 Workshop

The Digital Services Act (DSA) took center stage at the first CLEAR-TEXT workshop during the Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2026), where two major studies analyzed the regulation through the lens of plain language and digital rights. Presentations by Iglika Ivanova and Dr. Ruslana Margova examined the European Commission's DSA resources and the clarity of its Bulgarian localized version.

The first CLEAR-TEXT workshop, organized by Dr. Irina Temnikova from the GATE Institute, Dr. Maria Todorova from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), and Assoc. Prof. Dimitar Kazakov from the University of York, was held as part of the Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2026). The event brought together prominent Bulgarian and international figures in computational linguistics, including Prof. Ruslan Mitkov, Assoc. Prof. Dimitar Kazakov, Prof. Constantin Orăsan, and Dr. Matthew Shardlow. The aim was to discuss methods and solutions for measuring and improving text readability, as well as the creation of the first readability index for the Bulgarian language under B-CLEAR—an internal project at the GATE Institute.

The panelists in the first part of the discussion included Prof. Tatyana Angelova from Sofia University (SU), a leading authority in the methodology of teaching the Bulgarian language; Assoc. Prof. Diana Dimitrova, a linguist and practitioner from Veliko Tarnovo University (VTU); and Prof. Andreana Eftimova, a media communication expert from Sofia University. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Ruslana Margova from BROD. Nevena Grigorova, also from BROD, was part of the research team led by Dr. Temnikova, which presented the results of a pilot eye-tracking experiment assessing children's reading skills.

Iglika Ivanova, a media literacy expert at BROD and the current Chair of the Bulgarian Coalition for Media Literacy, spoke about the European Commission’s publication, The Digital Services Act Explained, in her presentation titled "Genre Transformation and Legal Elision: a Comparative Analysis of the European Commission's DSA Guidelines and Their Simplified Derivative for Children". Dr. Ruslana Margova examined the DSA from a different perspective, assessing the comprehensibility of its Bulgarian version against ISO standards in her presentation, "Plain Language for Digital Rights: Applying ISO 24495-1 to the Bulgarian Communication of the Digital Services Act".

Stanislav Penkov, also from GATE, chaired the natural language processing session, while the young Georgi Goranov assisted with the work of the entire workshop.