Title :
Tactile web navigator device for blind and visually impaired people
Author :
Ahmed, Alaeldin A. ; Yasin, Mustafa A A ; Babiker, Sharief F.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Univ. of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan
Abstract :
Blind or visually impaired people have limited or no access to the internet. This paper presents a low cost tactile web navigator device aimed at enabling blind people to have feasible internet accessibility. This navigator design includes a microcontroller that communicates with the browser software proxy transcoder server running on a PC to acquire the text from a web page. The text is subsequently displayed using an array of solenoids giving the required tactile sense. The visually impaired user then uses his/her tactile sense to recognize the text in Braille language. This device also provides an English character mode. Many navigation functions like loading a webpage address, clicking on links and entering data (E-mails, passwords, etc) have been provided. The navigator was tested by volunteer blind users with excellent results. The cost of the implementation is an impressive ~12% of the commercial Braille displays.
Keywords :
Internet; handicapped aids; interactive devices; microcontrollers; touch (physiological); Braille language; English character mode; Internet accessibility; Webpage address; blind people; browser software proxy transcoder server; data entering; links clicking; microcontroller; tactile Web navigator device; tactile sense; text recognition; visually impaired people; Browsers; Computers; Internet; Navigation; Software; Solenoids; Web pages; Braille; Tactile; Web navigator;
Conference_Titel :
Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT), 2011 IEEE Jordan Conference on
Conference_Location :
Amman
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1083-4
DOI :
10.1109/AEECT.2011.6132519