Low-cost reading tool for economically less-privileged visually-impaired people exploiting ink-based braille system

Abstract

People with visual impairment use Braille as a medium of textual representation having palpable dots. While the more privileged among us use OCR based text readers as preferential alternative, the lesser privileged ones are still bundling with conventional Braille tools. Our endeavor in this thesis is to develop a low-cost and easy-to-use solution for less-privileged people. Here, we propose EyePen, a system that enables less-privileged visually-impaired people reading Braille characters, printed using conventional ink-jet and laser printers. The use of printed Braille characters using ink-jet printers offers a cost-effective alternative in place of the more expensively printed conventional palpable Braille dots. Besides, EyePen demands a very short learning period and offers a smooth learning experience ensuring ease-of-use while being in operation. We conduct a participatory design and iterative evaluation involving five visually-impaired children in Bangladesh for more than 18 months. Our user evaluation reveals that EyePen is easy-to-use, and exhibits a potential low-cost solution for economically less-privileged visually-impaired people. The user evaluation results show that the accuracy of reading printed Braille characters using EyePen converges to 100% within a very short period of time for all users. Finally, we present a potential writing aid that can facilitate low-cost and easy writing of Braille characters on normal paper exploiting our system.