IIT-Kharagpur Brings New Braille for Visually Challenged.

In a recent development, Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur has come up with a unique technology via a software that enables conversion of Indian languages into Braille for the visually challenged.

The Sparsha Transliteration System developed by IIT-Kgp's Communication Empowerment Lab, led by Anupam Basu, can accept Indian language texts (such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Oriya, Kannada) as input and convert it into Braille.

"The software takes any Indian language text as input in Unicode and can convert it to Braille and facilitates the production of Braille textbooks," Basu, a professor at IIT-Kgp's department of computer science and engineering, told Media.

IIT-Kgp recently inked a deal with Odisha's Siksha 'O' Anusandhan University to produce necessary Braille books in Odiya through Sparsha.

Among the variety of pioneering and award-winning assistive technologies developed, there is also the 'speech-enabled Baishakhi keyboard' for the visually challenged.

"Using this software, the blind people will be able to type (Bangla and English) and hear what they are typing,' Basu further added.