Web Navigation Tool for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Internet access has become a necessity for all sectors in communities. Conventional web navigation means hinder access to the visually impaired. Presented is a low cost tactile web navigator device aimed at enabling blind people to have efficient and economic internet accessibility. Presented in this paper centers around a microcontroller that communicates with a proxy transcoder browser server that runs on a PC to acquire the text from a target web page. An array of solenoid coils is used to output the text in tactile form to the end user. The device has the ability to output the text in Braille language format mode or in plain English character format using the usual dot-matrix representations mode. The navigator can also be configured to output the text in other languages using the Pattern-Generator tool Many navigation functions like loading a webpage address, clicking on links and entering data (E-mails, passwords, etc) have been provided. The navigator was tested by blind volunteer with excellent results. The cost of the implementation is an impressive ~12% of the price of commercial Braille displays.