1. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology (IJECET), ISSN
0976 – 6464(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online) Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August (2013), © IAEME
221
A TEACHING SYSTEM FOR NON-DISABLED PEOPLE WHO
COMMUNICATE WITH DEAFBLIND PEOPLE
A. A. Supekar1
, Prof. S. B. Somani2
, Prof. V.V. Shete3
Department of Electronics And Telecommunication, MIT College of Engineering , Pune, India
ABSTRACT
The World Health Organizaion (WHO) states that 15 percent of world population are with
disabilities. Deafblindness is a combination of vision and hearing impairments. There are a few
people who are completely deaf and blind. Our world is organised around hearing sighted people,
and this can present many challenges to a deafblind person. If you have little or no sight and hearing,
learning to communicate, to make yourself understood, or hear other people speaking is very difficult
and can be isolating. In a crowded room a sighted hearing person sees who is talking to them and
hears what they are saying. A deaf person may use their vision to lip read what others are saying. But
if they lose their sight as well, how will they know someone is trying to communicate. We all depend
on information and feedback means, about what is going on around us. This is difficult for deafblind
people to access if they don’t get the right support.
Keywords: Deafblind, Finger Braille.
I. INTRODUCTION
There are many ways of communicating with a deaf-blind person. Most deaf-blind people
have some usable vision or hearing. Because a deaf-blind person can't compensate for the loss of one
sense with the other, even a partial loss of both senses can be considered deaf-blind. So a "deaf-
blind" person might be totally blind and hard of hearing, totally deaf and partially sighted, or may be
close to totally blind and close to totally deaf but have some usable vision and hearing. Generally
people that are only a bit vision- and hearing-impaired are referred to as vision-impaired/hard-of-
hearing. But for someone who is totally one and partially the other, it's not uncommon to be
considered deaf-blind. Because of the wider definition of deaf-blindness, some deaf-blind people can
use auditory or visual ways to communicate, but just need these ways to be modified for their poor
vision or hearing. A good number of deaf-blind people can use some vision or hearing in some
situations but are functionally totally deaf-blind in other situations [1]. Some deaf-blind people are
truly completely deaf and completely blind and therefore can only use tactile methods of
communication in all situations.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS AND
COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (IJECET)
ISSN 0976 – 6464(Print)
ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online)
Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August, 2013, pp. 221-225
© IAEME: www.iaeme.com/ijecet.asp
Journal Impact Factor (2013): 5.8896 (Calculated by GISI)
www.jifactor.com
IJECET
© I A E M E

2. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology (IJECET), ISSN
0976 – 6464(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online) Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August (2013), © IAEME
222
Deafblind people use many different communication media according to the age of onset and
what resources are available to them. “Yubi-Tenji” or Finger Braille is one of tactual communication
media of deafblind people (Fig. 1).
Recently, some Braille input devices were developed [4]. These devices let deafblind person
wear gloves or an keyboard to input their Finger Braille and actuators to output non-disabled
person’s speech converted to Finger Braille. In such supporting devices, deafblind person is
burdened with wearing the sensors and the actuators, and must master new communication system
with the supporting devices.
Objective of this project is development of a Finger Braille supporting device which
represents skin contact communication, since skin contact is only a non-verbal communication for
deafblind person.
II. FINGER BRAILLE SUPPORTING DEVICE
Fig. 2 shows the concept of the Finger Braille supporting device. The main feature of this
project is that deafblind person and non-disabled person who are non-skilled in Finger Braille can
communicate by usual Finger Braille [2]
.
Fig. 1 Finger Braille
This supporting device includes two assistive systems; one is a Teaching System, the other is
a Recognition System. The Teaching System recognizes non-disabled people’s speech and displays
the dot pattern of Finger Braille [5]. Thus deafblind person don’t have to aware of the supporting
device and may communicate by usual Finger Braille without interpreters. This employs
communication through skin contact. Deafblind person who are skilled in Finger Braille can catch up
with speech conversation and express various emotions, because of prosody of Finger Braille [1].
Because there are small non-disabled people who are skilled in Finger Braille, deafblind people
communicate only with interpreters. Thus the participation of deafblind people is greatly restricted.
III. POTENTIAL FUTURE SYSTEM
Block diagram for the system is shown in Fig.3. Normal user can communicate with the
deafblind user using this teaching system. Normal user will give text input data or voice input data to
PC. Software loaded in PC will convert this input data to Braille code. Microcontroller will control
the keys of Braille typewriter and hence deafblind user will understand the data.

3. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology (IJECET), ISSN
0976 – 6464(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online) Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August (2013), © IAEME
223
Fig. 2 Finger Braille Supporting Device
Aims to deploy:
• System which is more efficient, reliable and effective.
• It is easy to configure and setup teaching system and is secured.
• To overcome the limitations of existing systems.
• To build a simple teaching system for deafblind people.
• To implement teaching system so that both deafblind person and non-disabled person
unskilled in Finger Braille can communicate using conventional Finger Braille.
Fig. 3 Proposed System Block Diagram

4. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology (IJECET), ISSN
0976 – 6464(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online) Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August (2013), © IAEME
224
IV. SYSTEM ALGORITHM
For the development of system flowchart shown in Fig. 4 is used. It is a teaching system for a
person who communicate with deafblind person. When non-disabled person wants to communicate
with deafblind person, he will give text/ speech, this text/speech input will get converted into Braille
code through software loaded in PC. Because the sender must keep on touching fingers of the
receiver, speech recognition is suitable for input interface. First, the Teaching System created and
loaded dictation grammar of SAPI5.1, and then SAPI5.1 was ready to recognition. When a sender
spoke into a microphone, SAPI5.1 attempted to recognize it. Following successful speech
recognition, the Teaching System retrieved results of speech recognition. Sender could train SAPI5.1
by a speech training wizard. After the speech training, speech recognition engine could perform
better and improve SAPI’s personalization experience. According to Braille code microcontroller
will move dots of the Braille typewriter and hence deafblind person will understand the data.
Fig. 4 Flowchart of system

5. International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology (IJECET), ISSN
0976 – 6464(Print), ISSN 0976 – 6472(Online) Volume 4, Issue 4, July-August (2013), © IAEME
225
V. CONCLUSION
Both deafblind person and non-disabled person unskilled in Finger Braille can communicate
using conventional Finger Braille. It is a finger Braille teaching method for people who communicate
with deafblind people. The nondisabled subjects could change the dotting durations and finger load
by the teaching methods. For future work, number of output modules can be provided to deafblind
people, so this teaching system will be used by number of deafblind people at a time.
REFERENCES
[1] S. Fukushima, “Person with Deafblind and Normalization, “ Tokyo, Akashi Shoten, 1997.
[2] Y. Matsuda, I. Sakuma, Y. Jimbo, E. Kobayashi, T. Arafune, and T. Isomura, “Emotional
Communication in Finger Braille,” Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 2010,
Article ID 830759, April 2010, 23 pages, doi:10.1155/2010/830759.
[3] Yasuhiro Matsuda and Tsuneshi Isomura, “Teaching of Emotional Expression using Finger
Braille,” Proceedings of the sixth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding
and Multimedia Signal Processing, Dec., 2010, pp. 368-371.
[4] S.S. An, et al., “A Pair of Wireless Braille-Based Chording Gloves,” Proc. of 9th
International
Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, France, pp.490-497, July
2004.
[5] Y. Matsuda, I. Sakuma, Y. Jimbo, E. Kobayashi, T. Arafune, and T. Isomura, “Development
of Finger Braille Recognition System,” Journal of Biomechanical Science and Engineering,
vol. 5, no. 1,March 2010, pp. 54-65, doi:10.1299/jbse.5.54.
[6] Nazrul H. Adnan, Khairunizam Wan, Shariman Ab and Juliana A. Abu Bakar, “Principal
Component Analysis for the Classification of Fingers Movement Data using Dataglove
“Glovemap””, International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology (IJCET),
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 79 - 93, ISSN Print: 0976 – 6367, ISSN Online: 0976 – 6375.
[7] Parth Ranjan Singh, Prathishastry, Jagadish D. Kini, Farzadtaheri and T.G.Giri Kumar,
“Design and Development of a Data Glove for the Assistance of the Physically Challenged”,
International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology
(IJECET), Volume 4, Issue 4, 2013, pp. 36 - 41, ISSN Print: 0976- 6464, ISSN Online:
0976 –6472.
[8] Nisargkumar Patel, Prof. V.V. Shete and Ashwini Charantimath, “LVQ Based Person
Identification System”, International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology
(IJCET), Volume 4, Issue 4, 2013, pp. 185 - 193, ISSN Print: 0976 – 6367, ISSN Online:
0976 – 6375.