Voice Agentic Smart Reader Application In Sinhala and Tamil For Visually Impaired People

Abstract

This paper proposes an intelligent smart reading system to improve access to documents, news articles, and printed content for visually impaired and reading-challenged users, particularly in low-resource languages such as Sinhala and Tamil. Although recent advances in computer vision, speech processing, and large language models have enabled effective document understanding, existing systems often operate independently and provide limited support for non-visual navigation, interactive information access, and expressive audio output. The proposed system integrates four main components into a unified framework. First, a voice-guided navigation module enables users to capture documents without visual assistance by providing real-time audio guidance, ensuring proper alignment and reliable image acquisition for text recognition. Second, a Tamil document understanding and question answering module processes document content and supports accurate, context-aware information retrieval using a retrieval-based approach, while also providing personalized content recommendations. Third, a voice-assisted Sinhala reading module allows users to navigate documents and access information using natural voice commands and semantic processing. Finally, an emotional text-to-speech module generates expressive speech in Sinhala and Tamil, improving the naturalness and clarity of audio output. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system improves document capture accuracy, navigation efficiency, information retrieval performance, and speech quality. Overall, the system provides a practical, accessible, and user-centered solution for intelligent document interaction in underrepresented languages.