eBraille Reading-Aid

Reading without sight

eBraille is a conceptual pair of eyeglasses that enable visually impaired persons to read and navigate their surroundings without assistance. It is a real-time image analytic glass designed for the visually impaired.

The device is capable of analysing an image to get information from it in real time. eBraille can detect and extract text or handwritten letters and digits from notes, newspapers, signboards, marker boards or any other source using optical character recognition, and converts that extracted text to speech.

It also detects objects, products and persons from images and communicates that information by speech. The image analytics run on-premise and do not require an internet connection, which eliminates delays from cloud connectivity issues.

Design thinking and methodology

The idea for eBraille was born during a hardware hackathon I chaired in 2018. The hardware consists of a powerful processor capable of running image processing algorithms, four high-resolution cameras, a rechargeable battery — all embedded in stylish eyeglasses — and a Bluetooth earpiece for speech communication.

Key considerations

• Size of the device. Designed to be as compact as possible, to avoid putting unnecessary load on the user.
• Cost. Kept as low as the technology allowed, because the people who need it most can least afford it.
• Independence from the network. Running the analytics on the device rather than in the cloud removes the delay, and the dependency, entirely.