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

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.