Raspberry Pi based braille keyboard design with audio output for the visually challenged

Abstract

Most blind and visually impaired students in third world countries still use mechanical braille for their education. With the advancement of technology and the spread of electronic communication, paper-based Braille is not effective and efficient enough. The Raspberry Pi-based Braille keyboard design with audio output is a low-cost electronic keyboard whose main features are to vocalize Braille characters written by a visually impaired student and display them on an LCD screen. Proposed to promote an interactive educational experience among students, teachers and parents, the Braille printer is affordable and cost-effective with advanced features. The design of the device is simple as it is based on Raspberry Pi technology. The user hears the output after a short buzzer beep when the character typing process is finished. gTTS (Google Text-to-Speech) is a Python package and Google Translates text-to-speech API is used to convert text to speech. The data is displayed on an LCD screen for the non-visually impaired (teacher/parent). The Braille keyboard study is designed through the Proteus simulation program. This work focuses on developing a Braille keyboard for later stages that allows users to use the Braille writing system to enter text and communicate with digital devices.