Design of a Personal Digital Assistant for the Visually Challenged

This paper intends to address the problems of people who are visually challenged. One of the most vital parts of the human body is the eyes, unarguably. A visually challenged person is unable to appreciate many good things in life and has to spend his entire lifetime in darkness whereas a person without hands or legs can still do his daily chores on his own. Also, in the knowledge driven world, quality education is an absolute necessity in order to succeed and advance. All the available books and documents are not in the digital format. For a visually challenged person, to access these, a portable text reader is required. People with impaired vision face difficulty in their locomotion. They need to remember all the objects around when they are moving around in familiar places (home environment). This work proposes a hand-held device for visually handicapped people that integrates a Text Read-out system and a navigation assistant, which will help them to handle such challenging situations. This paper describes the implementation of a system that acts as a personal device for people with vision impairment. The implementation is done using ‘off the shelf hardware and software’ components.