Conversion of Braille to Text in English, Hindi and Tamil Languages

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for converting scanned Braille documents in English, Hindi, and Tamil into speech, facilitating access for visually impaired users by digitizing and reading Braille texts aloud.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-language Braille-to-text conversion system with image processing, segmentation, and language-specific mapping, including a Braille input mechanism via keyboard.

Findings

Effective noise reduction and dot enhancement in scanned images

Accurate segmentation and character mapping for three languages

Real-time speech output of converted Braille text

Abstract

The Braille system has been used by the visually impaired for reading and writing. Due to limited availability of the Braille text books an efficient usage of the books becomes a necessity. This paper proposes a method to convert a scanned Braille document to text which can be read out to many through the computer. The Braille documents are pre processed to enhance the dots and reduce the noise. The Braille cells are segmented and the dots from each cell is extracted and converted in to a number sequence. These are mapped to the appropriate alphabets of the language. The converted text is spoken out through a speech synthesizer. The paper also provides a mechanism to type the Braille characters through the number pad of the keyboard. The typed Braille character is mapped to the alphabet and spoken out. The Braille cell has a standard representation but the mapping differs for each language. In this paper mapping of English, Hindi and Tamil are considered.