Lighting the way through the home: development of early braille literacy

Emergent braille literacy is the earliest phase of language development where children, from infancy, are exposed to 'direct, repeated and meaningful interactions with braille literacy materials and events' (Rex, Koenig, Wormsley, & Baker, 1995, p.10). Activities such as shared reading of tactile books, scribbling on the braille machine, joint engagement in nursery rhymes, songs and chants help infants acquire cognitive concepts and develop physical skills to engage in braille. The process leads to the early development of literacy concepts including speaking, listening,reading and writing, as a foundation for braille literacy (Drezek, 1999)

Mesin Ketik Huruf Braille ElektronikBerbasisMikrokontroler ATmega16

Perhatian bagi para penyandang tuna netra saat ini masih kurang. Masih sangat jarang ditemui pengumuman publik atau sejenisnya dalam bentuk huruf braille. Hal ini terjadi karena pembuatan huruf braille dengan menggunakan cara manual membutuhkan waktu yang relatif lama, disamping itu juga pembuat harus menghafal motif huruf braille. Memang sudah terdapat printer untuk huruf braille tetapi harganya masih sangat mahal. Alasan-alasan tersebut mendasari pembuatan mesin ketik huruf braille elektronik berbasis mikrokontroller ATmega16 guna memudahkan pembuatan huruf braille bagi orang awas tanpa harus menghafal motif-motif huruf braille. Pembuatan alat ini dimulai dengan merancang dan merakit hardware yang dilanjutkan dengan membuat software. Alat ini menggunakan keyboard sebagai input dan dua buah motor stepper serta solenoid sebagai output. Perancangan perangkat lunak sebagai pengendali pada mikrokontroller ATmega16 menggunakan bahasa C dan software CodeVsion AVR sebagai compiler-nya. Proses akhir pembuatan alat ini adalah dengan mendownloadkan software ke sistim minimum AT-mega 16. Hardware telah berhasil dibuat dengan menggunakan sistem minimum mikrokontroler ATmega16 yang digabungkan dengan instrumen pendukung lainnya. Software Mesin Ketik Huruf Braille Berbasis Mikrokontroller ATmega16 berhasil dibuat dengan menggunakan CodeVisionAVR berupa satu program utama. Alat ini membaca data dari input keyboard yang ditekan, menggerakan motor stepper dan atau solenoid sehingga dapat menghasilkan motif huruf Braille sesuai tombol keyboard yang ditekan pada selembar kertas

User friendly system for the visually impaired in learning Al-Quran

This study presents a method to enable the visually impaired Muslim to learn and read the Al-Quran using Braille Display with software help. The system reads the database which contains all verses of Al-Quran and user will need to select the verse and ayah to read. Besides that, this system can be used in a class to teach visually impaired students to learn Al-Quran. Every word or character typed by the instructor in the main Braille Panel will be transmitted to the sub Braille Panel that is connected to the main Braille Panel. The selected verse of Al-Quran and ayah will also generate an index before being transmitted to the Braille Panel. The index will be transmitted to the Braille Display for people to touch and read the display. A user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be used to fulfill the ergonomics for the visually impaired user's physical capabilities. Several approaches are used to design and implement the interface for the visually impaired like speech or sound output and Braille display. The Braille codes can be displayed using the Braille panel. The design interface and structure of the system for the visually impaired users in learning Al-Quran is presented

BrlAPI: Simple, Portable, Concurrent, Application-level Control of Braille Terminals

Screen readers can drive braille devices for allowing visually impaired users to access computer environments, by providing them the same information as sighted users. But in some cases, this view is not easy to use on a braille device. In such cases, it would be much more useful to let applications provide their own braille feedback, specially adapted to visually impaired users. Such applications would then need the ability to output braille ; however, allowing both screen readers and applications access a wide panel of braille devices is not a trivial task. We present an abstraction layer that applications may use to communicate with braille devices. They do not need to deal with the specificities of each device, but can do so if necessary. We show how several applications can communicate with one braille device concurrently, with BrlAPI making sensible choices about which application eventually gets access to the device. The description of a widely used implementation of BrlAPI is included

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)

The Electronic Braille Type Machine Basically of Microcontroller ATmega16

Now, caring for blind is too fews. The public information or the same kind in braille font is rarely to find. It cause made of braille font with manual methode needs a long time, beside that the creator must to learn the motif of braille font. There are the printer of braille font, but the price is tooexpensive. This fact be principle of made the electronic braille type machine basically of microcontroller ATmega16 for easy made the general people to comunicate with the blind. Start of process to made this instrument is stake out and connect of hardware and next process is made of software. This instrument use keyboard as input and two motor stepper aslo a solenoid as output. The preparation of software for directed in microcontroller ATmega16 use C language and software CodeVision AVR as compiler. Finishing process is to downloading the software to microcontroller ATmega 16. The hardware is succesfull made use minimum system microcontroller ATmega16, That joined with other instrument. The software of electronic braille type machine basically of microcontroller ATmega16 is succesfull made use CodeVision AVR in one main program. This instrument read the data from input keyboard that press, to move motor stepper and or solenoid so that can to bring outside motif braille font the suitable knot of keyboard that press at a sheet of paper. Key words : type machine, braille fon

An Arabic Optical Braille Recognition System

Technology has shown great promise in providing access to textual information for visually impaired people. Optical Braille Recognition (OBR) allows people with visual impairments to read volumes of typewritten documents with the help of flatbed scanners and OBR software. This project looks at developing a system to recognize an image of embossed Arabic Braille and then convert it to text. It particularly aims to build fully functional Optical Arabic Braille Recognition system. It has two main tasks, first is to recognize printed Braille cells, and second is to convert them to regular text. Converting Braille to text is not simply a one to one mapping, because one cell may represent one symbol (alphabet letter, digit, or special character), two or more symbols, or part of a symbol. Moreover, multiple cells may represent a single symbol

Aiding the Visually Impaired: Developing an efficient Braille Printer

With the large number of partially or completely visually impaired persons in society, their integration as productive, educated and capable members of society is hampered heavily by a pervasively high level of braille illiteracy. This problem is further compounded by the fact that braille printers are prohibitively expensive - generally starting from two thousand US dollars, beyond the reach of the common man. Over the period of a year, the authors have tried to develop a Braille printer which attempts to overcome the problems inherent in commercial printers. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to introduce two prototypes - the first with an emphasis of cost-effectiveness, and the second prototype, which is more experimental and aims to eliminate several demerits of Braille printing. The first prototype has been constructed at a cost significantly less than the existing commercial braille printers. Both the prototypes of the device have been constructed, which will be shown.Comment: 6 pages. IEEE accepted paper (not published yet) International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI-2017

KALKULATOR SUARA DWI BAHASA DENGAN KEYPAD BRAILLE BERBASIS MIKROKONTROLER ATMEGA128

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui sistem hardware dan software, unjuk kerja, serta tingkat kelayakan dari Kalkulator Suara Dwi Bahasa dengan Keypad Braille Berbasis Mikrokontroler ATmega128. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode Research and Develelopment. Obyek penelitian adalah produk kalkulator suara dwi bahasa dengan keypad Braille berbasis mikrokontroler ATmega128. Tahapan penelitian meliputi : 1) Pengamatan sistem dengan metode dokumentasi serta pengukuran titik kerja 2) Pengujian (oleh peneliti) untuk mengetahui unjuk kerja aspek efficiency dan performance 3) Pengujian untuk mengetahui kelayakan aspek functionality (oleh ahli) dan usability (oleh pengguna) dengan instrumen angket/kuisioner. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan sistem Kalkulator Suara Dwi Bahasa (Inggris -Indonesia) Berbasis Mikrokontroler ATmega128 terdiri dari komponen masukan (Keypad Braille dan Switch Bahasa), komponen pemroses (ATmega128 berisi program/software), komponen penyimpan suara (SD Card), serta komponen keluaran (Speaker dan LCD) yang dikemas dalam box berukuran 18 cm x 11 cm x 6 cm. Kalkulator suara memiliki performance untuk menghitung dengan baik, dengan batas perhitungan maksimal 7 digit, efisiensi daya optimal 52% serta respon penekanan tombol dalam bahasa Indonesia lebih cepat (efisiensi waktu 93,53%) dibanding bahasa Inggris. Pengujian kelayakan memperoleh hasil bahwa kalkulator suara sangat layak (kelayakan 100% untuk aspek functionality serta 85,17% untuk aspek usability) untuk digunakan sebagai alat bantu menghitung bagi tunanetra. Kata Kunci : Kalkulator Suara, Keypad, Braille, Mikrokontrole