An Efficient Auxiliary Reading Device for Visually Impaired

In the modern era, Braille has removed obstacles in education and employment for visually impaired people, but it is still challenging to a great extent. A plethora of devices had been developed which use the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Text to Speech Synthesizer (TTS) techniques to perform the reading task. However, their utilization is limited in the way they have been implemented into a usable device. In this context, an ergonomic wearable goggle is designed for blinds to overcome the challenges pertaining to existing devices, enabling them to read any kind of printed or electronic textual materials like books, newspapers, bills, labels and e-mails etc. The device works offline using single push button which initializes the four serially integrated operations namely scanning, image pre-processing, text extraction from the image and its narration through the earphones attached. High-quality images in the focus window of 25-45 cm could be captured even in dark/low-light conditions wherein a series of image processing algorithms are then executed to de-skew, Hough line transform and binarize the image removing unwanted noise to fetch the best output to be fed to the OCR. The text format output is then processed through TTS for narration. The key features of the device include its lightweight design (180 grams), portable nature, non-tedious in use, near real-time operation, wide scanning field, provision of rechargeable battery with high run time, low cost of development and no requirement of external aid in its operation. Further the device can also be operated while commuting.