SPARSHA: A Low Cost Refreshable Braille for Deaf-Blind People for Communication with Deaf-Blind and Non-disabled Persons

Abstract

In the modern epoch, one of the most imperative issues is the nuisance of day-to-day survival of the physically disabled people. Recent development in science and technology has provided a helping hand towards those physically challenged people in the form of different hearing enhancement tools for deaf people, vision enhancement technology for blind people and different audio-vision combinational devices for deaf-blind people. But in true sense, assistive technologies, that too within budget for the lonely deaf-blind people has not been sufficient at all for many years. In our paper, we have tried to introduce SPARSHA which is a low cost refreshable Braille device for deaf-blind and blind people to communicate with other deaf-blind people, blind people and with the nondisabled people. SPARSHA is an electronic device which is connected with a computer and acquires the signal corresponding to alphabet, digit or special symbols and displays the corresponding Braille to represent those alphabet, digit or special symbols. There are six pin to represent the character equivalent to the Braille; similarly we have used six pins to represent SPARSHA. These pins are movable and they can be individually controlled .They can go downward or can go upward. From computer an equivalent signal representing alphabet, digit etc. is sent to the device and the corresponding character is displayed in Braille. Therefore, SPARSHA is a very cost effective and portable Braille display which may provide an affordable way to the blind or deaf-blind people who are facing trouble in communication with the other disabled or non disabled persons in their daily life.