Remember Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s masterpiece Black?
Michelle McNally’s (Rani Mukherjee) Teacher, Debraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan) turns himself into her eyes and ears and walks her into a whole new illuminated world of knowledge.
Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), Chandigarh is using its technological expertise to give each and every visually challenged his/her own TEACHER- ‘Divya Nayan’.
‘Divya Nayan’ scans any script and reads it aloud. It will enable visually challenged to read non-Braille documents in Hindi and three other vernacular languages. It can additionally be used by the illiterates as well as elderly people with declining sight.
Remarkable Features of ‘Divya Nayan’
- Based on the principle of contact scanning of a printed document and converting it into speech, ‘Divya Nayan’ currently supports Hindi and English languages. Soon, it will be programmed for other vernacular languages.
- The existing devices are inept in distinguishing between column and row, but CSIO has overcome the limitation. It is capable of page, text and word-level navigation, hence enabling newspaper reading with ease.
- The device has an internal computer and has been interfaced with online news that can be played as audio for the user.
- ‘Divya Nayan’ has an internal storage of 32 GB with a run time of up to 3 hours and weighs 410g.
- The device is equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interface that helps to connect with the Internet.
- It can be connected to a monitor and used as a mini computer with screen reader utility.
Ashish Gaura, scientist at CSIO who has developed the device elaborated, “Existing devices can read in English and other foreign languages, but need a computer and are expensive. Our device costs around Rs 10,000 compared to a foreign language reader cost of around Rs 1.5 lakh”.
Its trial was done at the Institute for the Blind, Sector 26, in Chandigarh and their feedback has been incorporated in the device to make it user-friendly.
ChandigarhX applauds CSIO for its amazing innovation.
Source: Times of India
Image Courtesy: Google Images