Braille is a system of raised dots that allows visually impaired people to read tactilely. Currently, the number of books written in Braille script is less and the cost is high. This project is an approach to solve the problem of unavailability of many of the books and texts in Braille script. The Portable Braille consists of a camera module which captures the image of a printed text material and converts it into text format by using Optical Character Recognition(OCR). The characters in the text are converted into Braille characters(3x2 matrix form) and fed to the actuators. The actuators are the pins in the head of a dot matrix printer. The pins are actuated in such a way that it creates pressure at required points in the fingertip similar to how pressure felt when placed on an embossed braille character. By this way the device sends character by character to the user’s fingertip through the actuators. These characters will be sent with appropriate delays to make the user understand words/sentences. Hence a given printed text material can be understood by the blind person through his/her sense of touch.
• Ruphan S
