Three UGM students developed a reading aid for blind people called BR-BLIND.
Designed by Yassir Dinhaz, Mahmud Fauzi and Nicolas Christianto, the tool works by converting text from printed media into sound that can be heard instantly by blind people.
Yassir said BR-BLIND the development of BR-BLIND began with their concern about the limited availability of braille-version books. This hampers the blind people to read books with different topics.
Basic Health Research data in 2013 recorded the number of blind people for children aged 6-14 years in Indonesia, especially in Yogyakarta, had doubled from the 2010 data.
“This problem needs to be addressed seriously because the children need to get many kinds of information to hone their creativity,” he said.
This condition has driven the students to develop a technological innovation to help blind people. With this tool, it is hoped to open wider reading access for blind people.
“The tool we have developed uses Image Preprocessing algorithms before being converted to text by the Object Character Recognition (OCR). The text output will be changed into sound output by the Text-to-Speech (TTS) Engine,” said Yassir on Thursday (11/7) at UGM.
The device is connected with the blind people directly so as to facilitate them in accessing information that otherwise cannot be obtained.
Nicholas said the tool can be accessed without internet connection, so it can be used anywhere and has the potential for development in remote areas where the internet is difficult to access.
“This device is also supported by design schemes that are disability-friendly, thus increasing independent accessibility and reducing the level of dependency on help for its users,” he said.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/18082-br-blind-alat-bantu-baca-tunanetra-karya-mahasiswa-ugm
