Development of a text to braille interpreter for printed documents through optical image processing

This paper presents the development of an optical text to braille converter device for aiding visually impaired individuals to read printed materials. This is a solution for the lag or even failure of translating or printing the braille version of everyday reading materials. The system utilized optical character recognition engine in which an image of the text to be translated into braille is captured. The digitized texts are then transferred electronically in a braille haptic device. This device are piezoelectric based haptic system which is composed of several haptic pins arranged in a way to resemble the braille writing system. Several experiments were conducted to determine the performance of the system. The overall system reliability obtained was 95.68%. The system is also capable of processing speed of 1 word in 2 seconds. The system performs at its best with a letter sized page reading material within the range of 15 to 20 cm from the camera, with the camera positioned at 0 degrees.