Project Braille: The Implementation of the Seeing-Eye Computer

Project Braille: The Implementation of the Seeing-Eye Computer

The goal of this project is to provide convenient access to all of the printed materials to the visually impaired by utilizing functional senses other than sight. The proposed solution involves the use of modern technology to convert printed text into computer readable text through optical character recognition and later narrating the text using modern text-to-speech conversion (TTS). The process of converting books into an audio version via computer is currently in its infancy stage of development. There are several major issues that must be addressed in this conversion process. Today’s systems that are devoted to the TTS conversion process are expensive and are not widely accessible. The objective of this project is to create a conversion system at a minimal expense to those in need. The other issues that will certainly be addressed are the efficiency and accuracy of this conversion process. The project goals are to eventually provide affordable systems for institutions that educate and serve the visually impaired and to continuously improve upon the TTS conversion process.