Design and Analysis of a System to Read Braille with Remote Cloud Architecture

Abstract

Recognizing that physical Braille books have a high cost of production and purchase, using a refreshable Braille display is a viable solution. This paper discusses the design and architecture of a system which grants the visually impaired access to a number of books on a refreshable Braille display by using the huge number of existing e-books. Understanding that almost all the books that are available to a person who isn’t visually impaired, the design described in the paper takes e-books and converts them into Braille that is directly rendered on the refreshable Braille display’s interface with solenoid based actuation, thus eliminating the extra costs incurred in producing and purchasing specially printed Braille books. The design describes a 3D printable physical device which uses a NodeMCU for its computation and has internet connectivity to utilize the support of a web app and cloud servers whose architecture and functionalities are also discussed.