Digital Assistant to Aid Individuals with Print Disabilities to Interpret Printed Materials

Abstract

Print disability is the difficulty or inability to read printed material due to a perceptual, physical, or visual disability. An individual can be classified as a print-disabled individual if the person requires alternative access or accessible formats (Braille, Audio) to gain information from printed materials. Print disability can be caused by vision impairments, blindness, physical dexterity problems, learning disabilities, brain injuries, cognitive impairments, and literacy difficulties. There are millions of people around the world who cannot interpret printed materials due to the above difficulties. This can affect the individual’s day-to-day life as well as their studies. Even though there are tools to interpret printed materials into text, most of them are not sufficient to aid print-disabled individuals and lack accessibility options within the tools. Therefore, we propose to develop a mobile-based application to aid print disabled individuals to interpret printed materials which they cannot access without any assistance otherwise. This application will be based on machine learning and image processing and will be able to interpret printed materials including text and paragraphs, mathematical formulas, tables, charts, and images. Also, the application will be designed with accessibility features which enable print disabled individuals to use the application without any third-party assistance.