Wearable Haptic Braille Device for Enhancing Classroom Learning

Technological advances has enabled the development of various assistive solutions to aid the visually impaired in their daily activities. One of the primary focus that continues to persists is in developing an effective learning device that helps to not only read the alpha-numeric characters but also successfully read other spatial forms of learning such as diagrams, signals and graphs especially in the science and engineering streams. Braille for text in different formats including refreshable and portable devices are widely popular and effective, but they are either not economical to the downtrodden family of students or limits the use-case in the classroom setting. The real-time capability is not adhered, thereby the visually impaired students are deprived of immersive learning in the classroom environment. Although many refreshable braille devices are made available in the past decade, however the context of the classroom board is still not mapped entirely to the visually impaired students. The other constant challenge among the educators is expressing spatially relevant information such as exponential and logarithmic expressions which are either superscript or subscript in style to the impaired students. Hence a novel wearable device that enables real-time haptic changes to reflect braille representation of the classroom teaching including spatially relevant expressions and diagrams around a learning workspace to provide a complete context aware classroom board learning is presented. The unique form of the device aids in easing the learning aspects in high school and engineering levels thereby empowering the visually impaired students to take up the science and engineering fields in the future.