WebSite

By: Peter Hui, Samer Akileh and Lili Enseling

Inequality track

For the visually impaired, tasks like reading a printed document or interpreting a picture can be a struggle, especially if there are no accessible options available to them. This website makes text documents and images more accessible for the visually impaired.

Read For You features

https://readforyou.tech

Images

Documents

When a user uploads an image file (jpg, jpeg, png ), words describing the image will be read out and displayed on screen.

When a user uploads a document file (txt, docx, doc) the text will be read out and the contents will be displayed on screen.

How we made it

- Used GitHub for collaboration

- Used Express.js for backend

- Used Google Cloud Vision API to identify labels in an image

- Used Google Cloud Platform to host the server

- Used domain.com to manage the domain

Challenges

Files uploading

Using new API

Design

We spent quite a lot of time figuring out how to handle and process the files uploaded by users.

We decided to integrate the Google Cloud Vision API into our program, which was something none of us have worked with before.

We wanted our website to be very user friendly and accessible, so we followed guidelines designed to make websites better for the visually impaired with simple design and clear instructions.

Accomplishments

Teamwork

Research

It works!

To better manage our time, we split the tasks among our teammates and we were able to work on each of our smaller assignments and come together at the end.

In order to better understand our target demographic, we did research into what websites work best for the visually impaired, and what struggles they encounter online.

Despite the challenges, we were able to get our site to work as we had planned with both images and documents, and the text to speech function. It also has a custom domain and SSL certificate!

What we learned

Back-end

Front-end

- Basic web design elements

​

- File upload button

- How to use the Cloud Vision API

- Creating a domain

- Combining frontend and backend

-custom domain and SSL certificate

Read For you

Here is a short demo of our website!

*The Windows Narrator feature is turned on to simulate an actual experience of how someone who is visually impaired would view the website.

What’s

In the Future

More File Types Supported

Mobile Voice Feature

Currently our site is mobile responsive, however the voice compatibility needs more work.

At the moment we support jpg / jpeg / png / txt / docx / doc files, but adding pdf and various other types would be useful.

In the Future

More Settings

User sign up

For personalized settings, having a place to log in/sign up would be useful for the user. There could even be a place to save certain files.

Having a pause and play option would be helpful, as well as speed settings for the narration.

Thank you for listening!

Visit https://readforyou.tech to try it out yourself!