BENGALURU: Teachers at
Mathru Educational Trust for the Blind
in Yelahanka will soon cut their Braille printing costs by more than 90%, thanks to
printing technology
that uses
machine learning and image processing
developed by students and faculty members of MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT).
‘Soft Braille’ enables images and texts printed on the same page at just Rs 5 per page on ordinary dot-matrix Braille printer as against Rs 70 that is being spent now. “With affordable printing, the cost of creating textbooks with images will drastically come down,” Mathru school founder and managing trustee Gubbi R Muktha said.
Eleven students of the department of Information Science and Engineering, MSRIT, developed the software in two years. The software will be deployed at Mathru school first.
“In schools for the visually impaired, the state-prescribed syllabus is usually translated into Braille. Printing images in Braille textbooks cost Rs 70 per page as special thermal printer and swell paper are required. Images appear as an appendix to the textbook or as a separate additional book, a coveted, costly possession with only one or two copies available for the whole class,” Mydhili K Nair, professor of information science and engineering, MSRIT, said.
“This technology will be helpful, provided both audio and tactile can be used at the same time. At present, we’re using only tactile to teach students,” said SP Murthy, general secretary, Karnataka Welfare Association for the Blind, who is keen on getting the software added to the association’s school computers as well.
Making learning hassle-freeThe faculty and students have developed two more products to make learning easy for the visually challenged. TALKs — Tactile Auditory Learning Kit — will teach basic arithmetic in an interactive manner with the help of audio stories and through various sounds, which have been pre-recorded in the software.
“TALK aims to make students “imagine images” by hearing the audio-labels associated with the tactile image outlines they feel. Auducator is a two-platform app deployable on lap/desktops and mobiles. It is a math tutor to teach primary students the concepts of basic arithmetic operations through stories and audio clips of animal sounds and water drops,” said a student.
The faculty of MSRIT said they want to add Kannada and other vernacular languages to the software.
Vijayakumar BP, head of ISE department, said: “These applications are designed in such a way that it can be deployed across all English-medium blind schools. Plans are afoot to scale up these apps for vernacular languages.”
These softwares will be part of the students’ computer lab curriculum from this academic year.
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