Tactile web navigator device for blind and visually impaired people

Abstract

Blind or visually impaired people have limited or no access to the internet. This paper presents a low cost tactile web navigator device aimed at enabling blind people to have feasible internet accessibility. This navigator design includes a microcontroller that communicates with the browser software proxy transcoder server running on a PC to acquire the text from a web page. The text is subsequently displayed using an array of solenoids giving the required tactile sense. The visually impaired user then uses his/her tactile sense to recognize the text in Braille language. This device also provides an English character mode. Many navigation functions like loading a webpage address, clicking on links and entering data (E-mails, passwords, etc) have been provided. The navigator was tested by volunteer blind users with excellent results. The cost of the implementation is an impressive ∼12% of the commercial Braille displays.