iBraille: A Text Converter Device For The Deaf-Blind

Overview

Less than 10% of the 1.3 million people who are blind in the United States are literate in Braille. Approximately 50,000 of these people are part of the deaf-blind community. More than 70% of blind community are unemployed, with about 50% of children dropping out of high school. This project aims at designing a device, “iBraille”, that will be able to convert text to Braille, which will facilitate people in the deaf-blind community to read, communicate, and be more involved in their surroundings. The prototype constructed is simple, affordable, and can succes sfully translate English written text to Braille. Using simple hardware including a camera, Raspberry Pi processor, solenoid pins, batteries, and text recognition software, “iBraille” costs roughly $160. The camera can be used in a given environment and the processor, within seconds, can interpret any English language statements in front of the camera. The English text is then converted to Braille, which is expressed physically by six mechanical solenoid push-pull pins, which the user can then read in Braille. While the prototype tested one-character output at a time with English text conversion, it can be developed to an array of characters in other languages.

Competition history

• JSHS 2020 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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