BrilTab

About Solution

As per World Health Organization (WHO), there are 285 million visually impaired people worldwide, out of those 19 million are children below the age of 15. Blind children have to learn braille language to be able to write text. Children learn braille with a page inserted into a plastic slate and a stylus is used to make hole on papers to make a character. This is the only way a child can learn braille language. The special schools for these students uses traditional slate to learn and practice braille language and the digital refresh-able braille slates available in the market is very costly and have not much features support. There is hardly any option available for these children for self-learning, persons who know the braille language can only tell whether punched combination of holes for a character is correct or not. Unfortunately, the number of schools and tutors who know the braille language is very less in developing countries, as a result which many blind people are deprived from the basic education.

The concept behind making ‘braille slate’ (we call it BrilTab) was to develop an automatic system that can work on its own and did not require any paper for practicing braille and the same device can be used multiple times for learning the language. This slate also act as a tutor to the blind students as the slate speaks up (Braille to Speech) the character/word that child has marked on it. The slate that can be used innumerable number of times to write braille language.  This re-usable braille slate come in two versions. In version 1, hardware mechanism is used to raise the dots in braille cells from the slate and software can read and interpret the combination of dots being raised from the slate so that sound of the particular character/word can be played. Braille to speech technology is introduced means the dots that have been marked on the slate will speak for blind students to hear and correct; initially it has been introduced for English and Hindi languages later other  languages will be added in due course.  Child can choose the language that he/she wants to practice on the tablet.  In version 2 The slate has handwriting recognition display attached to it, this can help a layman (e.g parents) to know the exact braille pattern of a given word/character. When a person write on the slate display the corresponding character/word will be raised, form the holes with the help of refreshable braille.   Prototype (MVP) of the for the both of the version is ready and some very interesting results have been confirmed form the of the slate in  blind schools of Punjab. This slate is be first of its kind and help blind children in rural/urban parts of developing countries. It help the students to learn braille language in schools or students out of the school those wanted to learn. Team has taken care to minimize he cost of refreshable braille so that I can reach to maximum audience. Version 1 has been made keeping in mind the charitable schools and family those cannot afford an expensive product. Whereas version has been developed seeing the overseas market

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