A method to provide accessibility for visual components to vision impaired

Non-textual graphical information (line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, etc.) are increasingly pervasive in digital scientific literature and business reports which enabling readers to easily acquire the nature of the underlying information . These graphical components are commonly used to present data in an easy-to interpret way. Graphs are frequently used in economics, mathematics and other scientific subjects. In general term data visualization techniques are useless for blind people. Being unable to access graphical information easily is a major obstacle to blind people in pursuing a scientific study and careers .This paper suggests a method to extract implicit information of Bar chart, Pie chart, Line chart and math’s graph components of an electronic document and present them to vision impaired users in audio format. The goal is to provide simple to use, efficient, and available presentation schemes for non textual which can help vision impaired users in comprehending form without needing any further devices or equipments. A software application has been developed based on this research. The output of application is a textual summary of the graphic including the core content of the hypothesized intended message of the graphic designer. The textual summary of the graphic is then conveyed to the user by Text to Speech software .The benefit of this approach is automatic providing the user with the message and knowledge that one would gain from viewing t

Non-Visual Representation of Complex Documents for Use in Digital Talking Books

Essential written information such as text books, bills, and catalogues needs to be accessible by everyone. However, access is not always available to vision-impaired people. As they require electronic documents to be available in specific formats. In order to address the accessibility issues of electronic documents, this research aims to design an affordable, portable, standalone and simple to use complete reading system that will convert and describe complex components in electronic documents to print disabled users

A Method to implement DAISY Online Delivery Protocol

Digital Accessible Information System format (DAISY) is designed for vision impaired users to access to electronic document. The purpose of this project is creating a reliable and free one-way audio link over the Internet to provide low-cost DAISY format transmission, which support vision impaired users to access and listen DAISY books as audio stream through the link. By connecting to this link, clients can save desired files on their own device as much as they listen and they do not have to download entire DAISY book. This paper describes a method to implement the protocol between user station premises and remote broadcasting library server contains DAISY books. The method explains audio signal streaming from one computer to another, by using free open source software

An open source reading system for print disabilities

According to World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) estimation only 5% of the world’s one million print titles that are published every year are accessible to the some 340 million around the world who are blind, vision impaired or who live with other print disabilities. Access to information and education is an established human right. Many with print disabilities struggle to achieve equality in this area due to the lack of accessible books and sources of information. This research describes an approach to design a comprehensive reading system for vision impaired people

Mathematical Formula Recognition and Transformation to a Linear Format Suitable for Vocalization

Students with vision impairment encounter barriers in studying mathematics particularly in higher education levels. They must have an equal chance with sighted students in mathematics subjects. Making mathematics accessible to the vision impaired users is a complicated process. This accessibility can be static or dynamic, in static accessibility the user is presented with a representation of the entire mathematic expression passively such as using Braille, dynamic accessibility allows the user to navigate the mathematical content in accordance with its structure interactively such as audio format [1]. MATHSPEAK is an application that accepts objects described in LaTeX and converts it to a linear or sequential representation suitable for vocalization, describing functions to people with severe vision impairment. MATHSPEAK provides interactive dynamic access to mathematic expressions by rendering them to audio format. This paper describes a method to create plain text from images of mathematical formulae and convert this text to LaTeX which is used in the earlier developed algorithm, “MATHSPEAK”

Non-visual representation of complex documents for use in digital talking books

According to a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) estimation, only 5% of the world's one million print titles that are published every year are accessible to the approximately 340 million blind, visually impaired or print disabled people. Equal access to information is a basic right of all people. Essen- tial information such as flyers, brochures, event calendars, programs, catalogues and booking information needs to be accessible by everyone. Information helps people to make decisions, be involved in society and live independent lives. Ar- ticle 21, Section 4.2. of the United Nation's Convention on the rights of people with disabilities advocates the right of blind and partially sighted people to take control of their own lives. However, this entitlement is not always available to them without access to information. Today, electronic documents have become pervasive. For vision-impaired people electronic documents need to be available in specific formats to be accessible. If these formats are not made available, vision-impaired people are greatly disadvantaged when compared to the general population. Therefore, addressing electronic document accessibility for them is an extremely important concern. In order to address the accessibility issues of electronic documents, this research aims to design an affordable, portable, stand-alone and simple to use "Complete Reading System" to provide accessible electronic documents to vision impaired

Layout Analysis for Scanned PDF and Transformation to the Structured PDF Suitable for Vocalization and Navigation

Information can include text, pictures and signatures that can be scanned into a document format, such as the Portable Document Format (PDF), and easily emailed to recipients around the world. Upon the document’s arrival, the receiver can open and view it using a vast array of different PDF viewing applications such as Adobe Reader and Apple Preview. Hence, today the use of the PDF has become pervasive. Since the scanned PDF is an image format, it is inaccessible to assistive technologies such as a screen reader. Therefore, the retrieval of the information needs Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The OCR software scans the scanned PDF file and through text extraction generates an editable text formatted document. This text document can then be edited, formatted, searched and indexed as well as translated or converted to speech. A problem that the OCR software does not solve is the accurate regeneration of the full text layout. This paper presents a technology that addresses this issue by closely preserving the original textual layout of the scanned PDF using the open source document analysis and OCR system (OCRopus) based on geometric layout and positioning information. The main issues considered in this research are the preservation of the correct reading order, and the representation of common logical structured elements such as section headings, line breaks, paragraphs, captions, and sidebars, foot-bars, running headers, embedded images, graphics, tables and mathematical expressions

Single sample face identification utilizing sparse discriminative multi manifold embedding

This paper describes three methods to improve single sample dataset face identification. The recent approaches to address this issue use intensity and do not guarantee for the high accuracy under uncontrolled conditions. This research presents an approach based on Sparse Discriminative Multi Manifold Embedding (SDMME) , which uses feature extraction rather than intensity and normalization for pre–processing to reduce the effects of uncontrolled condition such as illumination. In average this study improves identification accuracy about 17% compare to current method

Multilingual Text to Speech in embedded systems using RC8660

Most multilingual Test to Speech (TTS) systems are software applications which allow people with visual impairments or reading disabilities to listen the written material using computer. This paper describes an approach to make a multilingual TTS and embed it into the portable, low cost, and standalone embedded system to access and read electronic documents particularly in developing countries. There are several TTS such as Doubletalk, DECtalk, and Dolphin available in market, also there are some products using TTS such as Talking OCR, Bill Reader and Intel Reader, which are not affordable or multilingual. To design this system OMAP3530 an application processor board is considered as the hardware platform to process the language-independent parts of the application and RC8660 used as an integrated TTS processor

Mathspeak: An Audio Method for Presenting Mathematical Formulae to Blind Students

This paper describes the problems involved with learning and understanding math for vision impaired students and developing a computer system approach for rendering mathematical formulae into audio form. Access to mathematics is an obstacle for blind students. The lack of easy access to mathematical resources is a barrier to higher education for many blind students and puts them at an unfair disadvantage in school, academia, and industry [1]. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that there is great disparity between the math skills of students with disabilities and students without disabilities [2]. A methodology for rendering technical documents, in particular, complex mathematical formula, in an audio descriptive form (Mathspeak) is presented in this paper