Braille Hand Glove - a Real Time Translation and Communication Device

Abstract

Visually impaired people are excluded from most forms of communication and information. These are the ones who have the inability to see to a degree that causes problems not fixable by usual means and the people with complete vision loss are termed to be blind. With the exponential growth in technological era, blind people face many problems when it comes to accessing the digital data. In this project, a real-time integrated solution of hardware and software is developed to help the visually impaired people all across the globe to support the communication and interaction of such individuals, thus fostering their independence. The fundamentals of the proposed system are based on Braille which is the system of embossed writing invented by Louis Braille that gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals in which reading is done character by character. This concept is evaluated for the blind voluntaries with ample amount of hands-on experience and knowledge about Braille. The successful implementation of real-time two- way translation between English and Braille, and communication of the wearable device with a mobile phone opens up new opportunities of information exchange which were hitherto un-available to blind individuals, such as remote communication, as well as parallel one-to many broadcast. The glove also makes communicating with laypersons without knowledge of Braille possible, without the need for trained interpreters.