Braille Tech
LTCOE
BRAILLE TECH provides an inexpensive and affordable education source to Blind and Deaf-blind individuals by replacing costly ‘Braille’ printed books with e-Braille books by using a mobile app along with an easy to use smart glove. It is an easily accessible and portable platform for education, recreation and entertainment for the impaired community as they get a privilege to access various books that are otherwise very expensive.
Research
Design
Testing
Hardware
Braille Tech
The aim is to eliminate the pain of Deafblind individuals in the education sector. The main task of enabling an individual to access a touch screen is accomplished with the key idea of smart glove. The benefits of using E-books can now be also availed by impaired individuals by using a regular ‘Smartphones’. The reason for selecting Android OS is because 97% of India’s population uses android compatible handsets which are reasonable both in terms of availability as well as cost.
What is Braille script? Braille is a system of raised dots that can be read with the fingers by people who are blind or who have low vision. Braille symbols are formed within units of space known as Braille-cells. A full Braille cell consists of six raised dots arranged in two parallel row, each having three dots. The positions of the dot are identified by numbers from one through six. Sixty-four combinations are possible using one or more of these six dots. A single cell can be used to represent an alphabet letter, number, punctuation mark, or even a whole word. It converts e-books, documents and messages into digital braille. The smart glove helps the impaired person to read the e-Braille text through the mechanical process of tactile feedback being punched into his/her finger tip.
Since the boom of information technology, almost all the documents are electronic and the probability that in the future there will exist only electronic books and documents considering the steep alleviation in dependence of humans on machines for learning, it has become the need of the hour that each one should be able to read electronic documentation. Then why should the Deafblind community fall any less behind?
Apart for reading and communication purposes, Braille Tech will also allow people to learn Braille without having to buy Braille books, hence it is useful for common people to improve communication with the Deafblind community which will minimise the gap and increase socialization among them.
Research
Design
Hardware
People who have hearing as well as visual impairments are solely dependent on their tactile senses for their daily needs and for the purpose of communication. The scope of education for such physically challenged people is limited to learning from tactile sign language, print on palm, tactile fingerspelling, Braille embossed books etc.
For Blind individuals, searching the internet requires screen reading software, which will read out the information on the screen, but this may require a significant amount of time to learn the process. They can also use refreshable braille displays with audio clues to read the content. But people who belong to the Deafblind community are vision as well as hearing impaired and cannot use the audio clues to access the web and also most of them cannot afford the expensive braille displays. Thus they are deprived of knowledge, resources and affordable technologies.
Customer Need Identification - All the books used by the Deafblind community are printed in Braille which are expensive and quite heavy. India has a capacity of printing 130 million Braille pages annually, but due to a very huge cost of printing (approximately 6 and a half time the cost of a normal paper) only 20 million pages are printed every year. Also it is impossible to print every important book into Braille. It would really be a tedious task and also need a lot of resources. There needs to be an economical alternative solution for the impaired community to help them learn and grow.
Understanding of Customer & User – The product will be readily available to Non-Governmental Organizations supporting impaired people, Special Schools, associations and Institutions which provide assistance to them. Collaboration with all the above will make it easy to reach the Impaired Community. While the individual customers can avail the product directly by using the Braille Tech mobile application or Website.
Product Differentiation w.r.t. Competition –
Braille Tech is exclusively designed and developed keeping Indians in mind. The total cost of phase 1 of the project was less than 1000INR (15.38 USD). Comparing this price with other existing Braille technologies, its only 2% of their cost.
The ideation of Braille Tech was for the Deafblind community but the Blind community can also benefit from the product. Any person who has vision impairment or anyone who wants to learn and read braille can avail the product. Thus there are several categories of end-users who can use the product for education. Also the product can be used for communication purposes, by typing a customized English document and using the app to convert it into braille. This provides clear conversation between people. So the product can be used for either or both of the purposes.
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Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) – As per Times of India (an Indian Newspaper) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-has-largest-blind population/articleshow/2447603.cms
India has world’s largest number of blind people. Out of 37 million across the globe, 15 million are from India. Also Deafblind population in India is about 444000. Hence our SAM accounts to be 1,54,44,000. Our target market includes blind and deafblind schools, institutions, associations, Non-Governmental Organizations, individual customers etc.
Braille Tech is based on Omni-available android smartphones and affordable smart glove. It can be easily made available to Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM). Since India has more than 144 million Android users which means that our tool can be easily accessed and used by the impaired person irrespective of their location, economical background, age etc. Unlike the embossed Braille books, this app provides complete portability of books and carrying the glove to read these.
Working of the App:
The Android app is designed and coded in such a way that it takes input from English documents and converts it letter by letter to form a Braille document. The conversion algorithm is written in java and then compiled into the packages of the app. The output of the conversion is a 3*2 matrix with colour coded Braille dots. The user interface of the app is designed for regular people who can assist the impaired person to open the e–braille book. The app includes registration, instructions, Glove purchase page and a library which consists of Braille converted books.
Working of Smart Glove:
The sensor glove helps the Deafblind person to identify the e-Braille text through the mechanical process of tactile feedback. The sensor and the feedback machine are both placed on the tip of the glove. The user is supposed to wear the glove and read Braille with his/her fingers on the touch screen device. Whenever he/she encounters a color coded dot (it represents a raised/embossed Braille dot in the Braille book) while traversing through the text he/she feels tactile inputs being punched into his/hers finger. Thus he/she is able to interpret the electronic Braille.
Testing
The app and the smart glove prototype was tested at Helen Keller Institute in Mumbai, India. The feedback was provided by a impaired individual who performed a couple of tasks using the setup. The overall feedback was oriented towards improvement of the hardware functioning.
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