Ohnishi Lab.
Rehabilitation Engineering - Brain Support
Research Theme

| Overview | Brain Analysis | Computer Vision | Computer Audition | Natural Language | Rehab. Eng. |

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A Support System for the blind to Recognize a Diagram

It is difficult for the blind to understand a drawing using only the tactile sense. The authors developed a system to produce graphic information with a combination of tactile and vocal outputs using a personal computer through which a drawing is processed. The system recognizes a drawing by image processing, and displays the structure of the drawing on a tactile display so that a user understands the outline of the drawing by tactile search with his or her finger.

The display system has a function of a digitizer which senses the location of a touched pin and produces detailed vocal information of a part of the drawing which is indicated by the user's finger. The proposed system requires less labor from the user in understanding a drawing, since this method passes information more efficiently than other methods. The system was tested with electric circuit-diagrams. The results show that there is no best tactile display method for all blind people, i.e., the best method depends on each user, and this kind of vocal information should be as simple as possible.




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