A robust braille recognition system

Braille is the most effective means of written communication between visually-impaired and sighted people. This paper describes a new system that recognizes Braille characters in scanned Braille document pages. Unlike most other approaches, an inexpensive flatbed scanner is used and the system requires minimal interaction with the user. A unique feature of this system is the use of context at different levels (from the pre-processing of the image through to the post-processing of the recognition results) to enhance robustness and, consequently, recognition results. Braille dots composing characters are identified on both single and double-sided documents of average quality with over 99% accuracy, while Braille characters are also correctly recognised in over 99% of documents of average quality (in both single and double-sided documents)

An Automated Approach to Mitigate Transcription Errors in Braille Texts for the Portuguese Language

The quota system in Brazil made it possible to include blind studentsin higher education. Teachers’ lack of knowledge about the braillesystem can represent a barrier between them and students who useit for writing and reading. Computer-vision-based transcriptionsolutions represent mechanisms for reducing understanding restrictionson this system. However, such tools face nuisances inherentto image processing systems, e.g., illumination, noise, and scale,harming the result. This paper presents an automated approachto mitigate transcription errors in braille texts for the Portugueselanguage. We propose a selection function, combined with dictionaries,that provides the best correspondence of words based ontheir braille representation. We validated our proposal on a datasetof synthetic images by submitting them to different noise levelsand testing the proposal’s robustness. Experimental results confirmthe effectiveness of the solution compared to a standard approach.As a contribution of this paper, we expect to provide a method tosupport robust and adaptable solutions to real use conditions

Sorotan histeria massa remaja Muslim di Malaysia

Histeria merupakan permasalahan sosial masyarakat yang sering didengari berlaku dalam komuniti. Gejala histeria yang berlaku sama ada secara individu atau kumpulan menunjukkan terdapat tekanan dalam kelompok atau mangsa yang membawa kepada ledakan psikologi yang ekstrim dan di luar kawalan. Histeria yang berlaku khusus dalam kalangan remaja di Malaysia kebanyakannya terjadi secara beramai-ramai atau berkumpulan. Gejala ini dikenali sebagai histeria massa atau histeria epidemik iaitu cetusan histeria yang melibatkan sekumpulan individu yang berkongsi keadaan tertekan dan emosi yang saling berhubung antara satu sama lain. Justeru dengan melihat kepada senario yang berlaku artikel ini ditulis untuk mengupas isu histeria massa dan menyoroti fenomena histeria dalam kalangan remaja Muslim di Malaysia. Kupasan isu ini menggunakan kaedah analisis kandungan dengan cara meneliti dokumen dan artikel berkaitan untuk mengenal pasti gejala histeria massa dalam kalangan remaja. Rumusan perbincangan mendapati histeria massa dalam kalangan remaja di Malaysia kebanyakannya bercorak mass motor hysteria (histeria massa motor) dengan orientasi tingkah laku ceraian (dissociative), iaitu tingkah laku fizikal ekstrim berbanding di Barat yang sering berbentuk mass anxiety hysteria (histeria massa kebimbangan

Braille Reader for Android OS

Tato práce se zabývá analýzou a rozpoznáním znaků Braillova písma ve fotografii pořízené mobilním telefonem. Popisuje řešení návrhu a implementace aplikace pro rozpoznávání na mobilní platformě Android OS. Popsané obecné principy analýzy a zpracování obrazu jsou však uplatnitelné rovněž u jiných systémů.This thesis deals with the analysis and recognition of the Braille characters from a photo taken by a mobile phone. It describes design and implementation of application for recognition on Android OS mobile platform. Described general principles of analysis and processing of image are also applicable in other systems.