Text Gloss

In Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), a text label or annotation associated with a visual symbol (such as an icon or pictogram) on a communication device. The text gloss serves two purposes: it provides a written description to help communication partners understand the symbol's meaning, and it can be passed to a text-to-speech module to generate spoken output. Text gloss composition — the process of creating and refining these text labels — is central to the design of Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCAs), as the quality and clarity of the gloss directly affects the intelligibility and naturalness of the synthesised speech output.