1. ANDROID BASED COMMUNICATION FOR
DEAF BLIND AND MUTE
Jaison P Joseph Mafinah E M Bindhu John Tijohn Thomas
Department of BME, Department of BME, Department of BME, Department of BME,
Sahrdaya College of Sahrdaya College of Sahrdaya College of Sahrdaya College of
Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering
and Technology and Technology and Technology and Technology
Kerala, India. Kerala, India. Kerala, India. Kerala, India.
Jaisonrockz32@gmail.com mafinah09@gmail.com bindhujohn555@gmail.com tijotorres11@gmail.com
Abstract— Communication between a person like Helen Keller
who was mute, blind, deaf and a normal person have always
been a challenging task. About nine million people in the world
are deaf, blind and mute. Since eyes, ears and tongue are
impaired we need to think of the other two sense organs for
lighting their world of communication. At present there is no
technology existing for a two sided communication between a
normal person and a person who is blind, deaf and mute. Deaf
Blind and Mute communicator is a device which makes use of
touch sense organ for communication through a Braille kit, a
speech to Braille and Braille to speech interpreter unit. It
initially takes up the speech and does the following conversions,
voice to text and text to Braille. This is then given to the Braille
kit to decode the speech. On the other hand, the impaired person
can also speak to the world using the kit by giving an input to
the Braille kit, which is first converted to text and later to
speech. These conversions are made possible in android
platform by accessing the inbuilt Google dictionary which
houses around 1 million English words. This project gives a
blind deaf mute patient to easily communicate with a normal
person.
Index Terms— Braille, Android OS
I. INTRODUCTION
“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken
out loud” – Hermann Hesse Communication leads to
community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual
valuing Communication between a person who is mute, blind,
deaf and a normal person have always been a challenging task.
About nine million people in the world are deaf, blind and
mute. The basic idea behind this prototype came from Helen
Adams Keller who was blind, mute and deaf. Even Though
she was handicapped, she was a well known American author,
political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf blind
person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Determined to
communicate with others as conventionally as possible, Keller
learned to speak, and spent much of her life giving speeches
and lectures. She learned to "hear" people's speech by reading
their lips with her hands, her sense of touch had become
extremely subtle. She became proficient at using Braille and
reading sign language with her hands as well [1].
II. SUBJECT ANALYSIS
Communication is the essence of a social life. To be visually
and audibly impaired is a nightmare for most of us. Among
today’s 7.125 billion people an astonishing population of 7
million people suffer from blind-muteness.
A. Blindness
Blindness is the condition of poor perception. Various scales
have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and
define blindness. Total blindness is the complete lack of form
and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as NLP,
an abbreviation for "no light perception”. Blindness is
frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with
some remaining vision. Those described as having only light
perception have no more sight than the ability to tell light
from dark and the general direction of a light source. The
World Health Organization Defines low vision as visual
acuity of less than 22/60 (5/18), but equal to or better than
30/200 (8/60), or visual field loss to less than 20 degrees, in
the better eye with best possible correction[2]. Blindness is
defined as visual acuity of less than 20/400 (6/120), or a visual
field loss to less than 10 degrees, in the better eye with best
possible correction. As of 2012 there were 284 million
visually impaired people in the world, of which 245 million
had low vision and 38 million were blind. The majority of
people with poor vision are in the developing countries, over
the age of 50 years.
B. Deafness
A person is considered to be deaf if he/she can’t hear the same
range of sound intensities as a person with normal hearing
ability. People that cannot hear any sounds are also deaf[3].
People who are partially deaf may hear some sounds and may
hear words. People who can hear and understand words are
hard of hearing.
C. Muteness
Those who are physically mute may or may not have
problems with the parts of the human body required for
human speech. Being mute is often associated with those who
have hearing impairments or are deaf, but other variations of

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III. MET
s concerned w
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ad started wo
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THODOLOG
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patients.
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elp to explain
nvolved a B
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ervo motors fo
d actuators p
. This was
Fig 2 Top vie
tem is a way
al alphabets m
d persons can
was named aft
vered it and pe
in Paris. Each
or more raised
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arious pattern
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rd
keyboard con
any of the
he left bottom
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letter[8]. The
to input a wor
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ch can be unde
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brication was
h dimensions
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were drilled d
re inserted bet
oth sides for t
shaft was ma
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or each hole.
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the basic
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of six holes w
directly below
tween these ho
the lever to ob
ade to pass so
annels were f
s were made.
to the shaft. T
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arrangement
section
hings. The Br
sed lumps on
by the touch
Frenchmen L
hile teaching a
e Braille alph
e are six poss
er. By placing
nt shapes can
f the alphabet
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s in the Eng
starts with A
he alphabets as
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s some limitat
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kit ,
then
r the
made
were
w the
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s the
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3. C. B
It
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or c
up i
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thre
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D. B
B
in a
The
leftw
colu
Braille script
t is named aft
d by blind pe
cell is made u
in a rectangle
ee dots each
sitions. With t
ers. For refere
described by
positions bein
bottom on the
ht[4]. For exa
ee dots raised,
the top of the
Braille cell
Braille general
a grid of two
e dots are conv
ward column
umn.
Fig. 3 Brail
er Louis Brai
ople to read a
up of six dot
. The rectangl
. A dot may
this, it is poss
ence purposes
naming the p
ng universally
left and 4 thro
ample, dots 1-
, at the top an
right column.
lly consists of
dots horizont
veniently num
n and 4, 5, 6
Fig.4 Br
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and write. Eac
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nd bottom in t
.
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tally by the th
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from the top
raille Cell
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ethod that is w
ch Braille cha
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at any of th
sixty-four diff
r combination
ere dots are r
through 3 from
top tobottom o
describe a cell
the left colum
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E. BR
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added to the
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RAILLE CHA
t of the comb
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gnition here o
ndroid
ndroid is an
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marily for tou
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or absence of
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le cell represe
ch of the “a”
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symbols for
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RACTERS
binations aro
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Fig. 5 Braill
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imately 0.02
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0.1 inches (2.
nt cells is ap
lly and 0.2 i
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ximum of 40 t
ence of charac
ent letters “a”
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f the bottom d
“a” through
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ound 64 Brail
simplificatio
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ch as smart p
system has be
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tly developed
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mobile device
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The OS uses
world action
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screen input,
cameras, regu
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inches (0.5 m
dot centers wi
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pproximately
inches (5.0 m
11 inches by
to 42 Braille c
cters using the
through “j” .D
symbols to
dots ( dots 3 t
“e” to give
lle characters
ons of chara
.
x-based opera
phones and ta
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oogle, and o
ystem (OS) b
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touch inputs
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]. Despite b
it also has b
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been
. the

4. Android is popular with technology companies which
require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating
system for high-tech devices. Android's open nature has
encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts
to use the open-source code as a foundation for community-
driven projects, which add new features for advanced users or
bring Android to devices which were officially released
running other operating systems. The operating system's
success has made it a target for patent litigation as part of the
so-called "smart phone wars" between technology companies.
V. CONCLUSION
The communication between people is very important for
conveying our feelings needs etc with others. We can’t even
think of a world without interaction between people. If there is
no communication, then there is no existence. But there are
people who have lost the ability to communicate as their Eye,
Ear or Tongue may not be working properly. Even if they are
born with such kind of disabilities, communication is must for
their survival in the society. A common mode used for this is
a Braille kit for sensing through touch and understanding
things. This project aims to help these kind of people in a
more better and easy way. We use a Braille kit along with a
smart phone, Bluetooth module, PIC microcontroller,
keyboard to do this prototype.
REFERENCES
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Y; Arafune, T. Finger, Braille Teaching System for people
who Communicate with Deaf Blind People, Mechatronics and
Automation, 2007. ICMA 2007.
[2] Virkes, D; Nenadic, K; Virkes, D.Z. Positioning systems
for mobility of the blind, overview and analysis, Proceedings
Elmer 2004. 46th International Symposium Volume, Issue,
16-18 June 2004 Page(s): 342-346.
[3] Kenneth Hintz and Daniel Tabak, Microcontrollers,
Architecture, Implementation and Programming, Tata
McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited, International
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[4] Rajkamal, Embedded Systems Architecture, Programming
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New Delhi.
[5] I.J Nagrath, Electronics Analog and Digital, Prentice Hall
of India Pvt. Ltd
[6] K.A Navas, Electronics Lab Manual Volume-1, Rajath
Publishers, Ernakulum.
[7] PIC Mid Range Reference Manual, Microchip Corp.
[8] VB6.0 Programming, Black Book series
[9]http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/newsletters/emcs/b
raille04/63_67.pdf
[10] http://www.ieee.org/ieee03.pdf