Hardware design and implementation of Bengali Braille embosser

Ensuring education for the disabled people of Bangladesh is a big challenge. Among disabled people of Bangladesh, more than eighty percent are visually impaired. This eighty percent visually impaired people need to be educated by using Braille system. This paper presents hardware design and implementation of a portable Bengali Braille embosser. A simple micro controller is used as a controlling unit of the embosser. The Braille embosser uses octagonal disc type printer head with fixed character pattern. The octagonal disk of the head consists of two parts. Each part contains eight identical patterns of dots that will make the characters of Bengali alphabets. Each disk is driven by a separate stepper motor. A general purpose keyboard with USB interface is used for typing to make the character pattern. Presently the system is implemented for some characters and verified the Braille patterns by the students of Andha School (School for visually impaired people) at Muradpur, Chittagong. They read the printed characters successfully.