Affiliations: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Tirthankar Dasgupta, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, 721302, India. E-mail:tirtha@cse.iitkgp.ernet.in
Abstract:
BACKGROUND: Braille and text to speech systems have
tremendously improved the lives of the visually impaired across the world.
However, a large population of the visually impaired people in India is
still deprived of getting the benefits of such advancements. This was
primarily due to the difference in the technology required for Indian
languages compared to those corresponding to other popular languages of the
world. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we present a design and evaluation of a
unified open-source framework that will enable a visually impaired to access
and produce information contents in Indian vernaculars with the help of
computers. METHODS: The proposed framework has been designed by keeping
constant interaction with the visually impaired people and by keeping in
mind their different requirements. The framework is integrated with five
different engines namely, a forward and reverse Indian language text to
Braille transliteration engine, a Nemmeth editor to convert mathematical
expressions into Braille, a tactile converter to convert graphical images
into Braille, a voice mailing system to compose and receive voice based
emails for the Blinds, and an Indian language file reader with integrated
Hindi and Bangla speech synthesis engines. RESULTS: The framework has been deployed and exhaustively evaluated
by people from different Blind schools and organizations for Blinds all over
India. The transliteration engines are particularly useful for creating a
large volume of Indian language Braille books.
