PENPAL - Electronic Pen Aiding Visually Impaired in Reading and Visualizing Textual Contents

Abstract

Visually impaired people, in order to understand printed or hand written media, need the material to be present in Braille. They also require an understanding of the Braille language. The proposed system instead uses other senses that visually challenged person possesses, such as the ability to listen and convert the textual material into an audio stream. This concept starts with the capturing of the image and recognizing the text in the image using OCR/ICR. It then loads the required font templates for printed text into the conversion software. Subsequently for hand-written documents sub-stroke matching, segmentation and merging are used. The output of this process generates an electronic form of the printed media, like a text document. This is then cross referenced with a word repository for maximum accuracy, and in turn converted into an audio file. This information is then broadcast/multicast/unicast to the receiver who is paired with the source using ZigBee or Wi-Fi protocols. Since this technology is in the form of a pen, it is very convenient to use and is also portable. This instrument is a radically new one and can definitely be an empowering force in a blind person's life, and can be helpful in relieving them of their frustration of not being able to read whatever they want, thus enhancing the quality of their lives.