Interactive, Self-learning, Talking Braille Tutor

Background

This interactive tutor was built by us as a CSR project, that helps teach Braille to blind students (young or adult), with potential to reduce load on educators, introduce an element of self-learning and also enable teaching of Braille easily in a rural environment as well.

During a visit to the government blind school in Mysore, we observed how Braille script is taught to children in school. Braille is more than a century old script and system is being taught with very simple tools. However, both the instructor and student being blind, often adds difficulties in the process of teaching and learning.

The development of this concept has been incremental. We developed a Prototype, demonstrated it to braille teachers and blind schools and collected feedback to improve the next version.

Challenges in teaching braille

1. Availability of Qualified Braille Teachers in all places:
   • Most of the Braille tutors are themselves blind. Very few people with healthy eyes opt to learn Braille
   • Rural areas, the availability of Braille teachers is even more difficult. Some NGOs operating in the rural area told us that the teacher to student ratio is very difficult to manage due to non-availability of qualified Braille tutors.
2. Efficiency of Teaching Method:
   • The schools still rely on a method of teaching Braille with a wooden plate with six dips that represent a Braille cell and place a glass marble in the dips to form a Braille Character (See Picture).
   • Usually the children drop the marbles and so their teachers teach them on the floor or sometimes a lot of time is spent in recovering the marbles in classroom.
3. Load on Braille teachers in classrooms:
   • Unlike conventional classroom teaching where one teacher can teach many students, Braille teaching is a 1:1 system as the children are blind and have to tune the sense of touch to learn Braille.
   • The teacher has to arrange dots during initial learning for each child in the class, then take it to each child an verbally speak out what it means. This has to be repeated every day till the children get skilled in the script.
   • At the end of the day the teachers most of whom are themselves blind, are exhausted due to both verbal and activity overload.
   • Given the work involved, a typical class is recommended to have not more than 10 students, but many government schools have close to 18-20 students in same class due to lack of teachers.

Key Features of this concept/product:

1. Teaching Indian Languages (Bharathi Braille) The final prototype of the device has two braille cells so that it can teach Indian language braille script (Bharati braille) as well, along with braille abbreviations.
2. Teaching of Braille teaching in local languages: The device is designed in such a way that by just changing the SD cards content, we can change the languages taught by the device and also the language of Instruction!
3. Reduce load of teaching Braille in a classroom setup: The device helps in addressing the load on Braille teachers in a classroom teaching young children (aged 5-12 in a typical entry level classroom) and also adults.
4. Self-Learning: This Braille tutor is probably the only thing that can introduce Self-learning to blind children in a rural setup where it is very difficult to find qualified Braille teachers. The interactive Quiz mode helps a learner asses his/her learning levels!
5. Alternately the device opens up the possibility of an adult who doesnt have formal Braille training can assist and help a child in a rural setup learn Braille.
6. Increase interest of students to learn: The novelty of the device, we have been told by the teachers and students who used the prototypes, will help in increasing the interest levels of the students.

How the braille tutor was built!

Our Blog posts/media coverage regarding this product as it was developed

Sept 2012: Electronics For You Magazine - Sept 2012 Issue features our Braille Tutor under 'Innovation' section

Aug 2011: Braille Tutor concept becoming a formal product: Prototype 2

May 2011: Concept: Braille Tutor with Sound playback support

The First Prototype

The first prototype was made in 2009. The device had captive beads with just one Braille cell and used to just produce simple beeps in the speaker.

When we presented it to the local blind school, the teachers and students at the school liked the concept, but implored us to add Speech Capability to the device so that it helps reduce effort of the teacher. That is how the device evolved! We promised to get it into the device some day, but didnt have a road map as to when.

The Second Prototype

Eventually, when We started this company (Ideas Unlimited) we mentored four Engineering students to build the Second prototype with speech capability as a technology demonstrator.

Our company developed the speech playback software from a controllers flash memory, through a speaker which was integrated by the students into the second prototype they had built. But the memory in the controller was not sufficient to store large amounts of data and the students had limited time to do further work in their final year projects. The prototype proved the feasibility of adding speech to the device.

The development costs were mounting and the prototype devices used some imported micro-solenoids which had some limitations due to which the cost of the product would not be viable. When we posted on our blog about this concept, an old friend who works for a UN agency in Geneva (Rajesh Gopalakrishnan Nair - Incidentally he was a classmate in college), found the concept interesting and provided some seed money to keep the development effort going!

He also assured that he will promote the product if we complete it. But for this gesture from Mr. Rajesh Nair, we may not have pursued making this into a full fledged product, and may have remained only a technology demonstrator. Much later when we found that government funding was difficult to come through, his support helped us to keep the project going.

The Third prototype:

The third prototype we developed in house and to address memory problem, we put a 2GB SD Card inside the device to store all the sounds. It took nearly a day of recording and trimming of audio files in a make shift studio like environment in our lab to record all sounds required.

Eventually after getting the software and hardware right, we took out the device on field trials, to various blind schools (Rangarao Memorial School for the Blind, Mysore) and NGOs (Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement) who work with the blind in a rural taluk of HD Kote near Mysore. The filed trails, we realized that to teach Indian languages and Abbreviations (very commonly used in Braille script to simplify writing and reading) required two Braille cells.

Simaltaneously around the time of completion of third prototype, and embarked on fourth prototype based on feedback to have 2 braille cells, so all Indian languages can be taught using Bharati Braille Script.

The Fourth prototype:

Finally we started work on the Fourth Prototype around April 2012 after we arranged our own funds. We still had one technical challenge to crack the imported solenoids were too expensive to make the product viable and too low in force. This was a critical aspect to be addressed before we formally announced the product.

We then worked with a Mumbai based company Leader Electronics Corporation a solenoid maker in Mumbai Area, to design a coil for our hybrid design of a Solenoid and Linear motor to multiply the force of solenoid. Finally this version was able to speak in any Indian language medium and teach any Indian language in Bharati Braille script along with English.