Document Reader for Vision Impaired Elementary School Children to Identify Printed Images

Abstract

Vision Impairment is a severe reduction of one or more functions of the eye. The print disability prevents a person from gaining information from printed material in the standard way and requires them to utilize alternative methods to access the information. World Health Organization estimated that nineteen (19) million children are visually impaired worldwide. As they are the future of the world it is necessary to eradicate barriers to the journey of gaining knowledge. Hence, this paper presents a mobile-based application targeting elementary school students to read textual documents, which contains a graphical image. The mobile application provides audio assistance to navigate through a mobile application, autofocused image capturing of printed papers, store captured images, classify selected text, images, and read-aloud generated digitized text. Therefore, “Schmoozer” would allow visually impaired individuals to read unbraided documents without others' interaction. Furthermore, this paper discusses the test results and evaluations to justify the feasibility of the proposed solution.