Finger-eye: A wearable text reading assistive system for the blind and visually impaired

This paper presents our recent research work in developing a portable and refreshable text reading system, called Finger-eye. In the system, a small camera is added to the fingertip-electrode interface of the current Electro-tactile Braille Display and placed on a blind person's finger to continuously process images using a developed rapid optical character recognition (OCR) method. This will allow translation of text to braille or audio with natural movement as if they were reading any Braille Display or book. The braille system that will be used is a portable electrical-based braille system that will eliminate the problems associated with refreshable mechanical braille displays. The goal of the research is to aid the blind and visually impaired (BVI) with a portable means to translate any text to braille, whether in the digital realm or physically, on any surface.