Divya Drishti: A Portable Communication Device for Deafblind People

Team Members:

Chudamani Sahu

Dapinder Kaur

Ishan Narayan

Raghav Sardana

Seema

Societal Program: Level 800

Problem Statement

According to estimates by the World Federation of the Deafblind (WFDB), approximately 0.2% to 2% of the global population is affected by deafblindness. Applying this estimate to India’s population of approximately 1.4 billion, the number of individuals with deafblindness could range from 280,000 to 2.8 million.

For these individuals, communication and interaction with the world can be significantly challenging. To address this issue, we propose "Divya Drishti," a real-time, small, portable device that converts speech into braille, enabling effective communication for the deafblind.

Source: https://wfdb.eu/

Deafblindness

• Between 20% and 75% of persons with deafblindness reported functional difficulties, such as mobility and cognition.
• Children with deafblindness were statistically less likely to be in school than children without disabilities.
• In comparison with people with no disabilities, persons with deafblindness were statistically less likely to be working.

Source: https://wfdb.eu/

Existing System

Tactile Sign Language

The deaf-blind person puts his or her hands over the signer’s hands to feel the shape, movement and location of the signs.

Tracking

Some deaf-blind people with restricted but still usable vision (e.g., tunnel vision) may follow signs by holding the signer’s forearm or wrist and using their eyes to follow the signs visually.

Tadoma

They put their thumb on the other person’s chin, and their fingers on the other person’s cheek to feel the vibrations of the person’s voice and the movement of their lips.

Existing System

Screen Braille Communicator

The device has a QWERTY keyboard with an LCD display on one side, and an eight-cell braille display on the other side. The sighted person types short text on the QWERTY keyboard. The deaf-blind person reads the printed text by placing his or her fingers on the braille display. He or she then uses the braille display to type back text. The sighted person can read the text on the LCD display.

TTY with Braille

The TTY is connected with and stacked on top of a braille display, although both can be separate. It allows a deaf-blind person who reads braille to use the telephone.

Braille Notetakers

Deaf-blind people can also use braille notetakers to communicate with others who don’t know braille or their communication system. Many braille notetakers can be connected with personal digital assistants (PDAs) that are commonly used by others.

Proposed Solution

Divya Drishti is a handheld device designed to convert spoken language into braille text in real-time. The device is equipped with an array of micro actuators that create braille patterns, an electronic circuit for processing, and a microphone for capturing speech.

Linear Actuator

Method/Process

Step 1: Input Speech

Step 2: Speech to Text

Deep Learning

Step 3: Text Recognition

Word Repository

आप कैसे हैं

Recognition

Phase

Step 4: Braille Output

आप कैसे हैं

Machine translation

Thank You