Finger Reader For Visually Impaired

Unlike other devices for the visually impaired vi which scan words in chunks before vocalizing them fingerreader picks up words immediately.

Finger reader for visually impaired.

It is predicted that these numbers will be nearly tripled by 2050. Many people in the accessibility community were very excited by this prospect. So basically what is a finger reader. A wearable text reading device for the visually impaired.

Finger reader is a device that assists visually impaired users with reading texts or words. In proceedings of chi 14 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems chi ea 14 video showcase p. It works by storing a variety of audio files whereby audiobooks are one of them. Right now the only solution is disabling the touch recognition component of the device.

Keeping everything on fingerreader the same the user s finger is likely to disrupt the movable text. Wired reporter sandy ong highlights the work of prof. Who about 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision severe or moderate visual impairment.

While acknowledging this is a serious problem in the world through many kinds of research various solutions are being made to aid the visually impaired people. In march 2015 the massachusetts institute of technology mit announced that researchers in its media lab had developed a prototype of a reading device that is worn on the finger. This device is the most preferred for visually impaired people because of its one off cost can store a variety of audiobooks at a time and it is easy to use. Suranga nanayakkara who as a postdoc at mit helped develop the finger reader a device aimed at helping people with visual impairments read without the need for clunky hardware.

Liu pattie maes and suranga nanayakkara. Roy shilkrot jochen huber connie k. Unlike other common ocr optical character recognition apps that first scan and then process the page the mit device dubbed the finger reader reads text in real time.