Smart Bliss Board System for Multiple Disabilities

Abstract

This paper presents a communication mechanism for multiple disabled in the world (such as blindness, deaf, mental retardation, vocal disabled etc.). They have very few mechanisms to learn and communicate (Braille system, Sign language etc.). This work focuses on the category of the multiple disabled named “Cerebral Palsy”. Cerebral palsy is a disorder with movement, difficulties with thinking, learning and feeling. Most people of cerebral palsy are suffering in inability to read, write or speech. Therefore, they are unable to express their ideas naturally to others. On the other hand, they are unable to perceive others ideas as well. These communication barriers caused them to their teaching and learning. The Bliss symbolic language board is a concept for a learning method for the Cerebral Palsy disabled. At present, the Bliss symbols are printed on hard board. When using this printed Bliss board in the classroom, the teacher/tutor must concentrate each multiple disabled child separately to understand his/her expression using Bliss symbols. This is the main problem in their teaching and learning of multiple disabled children/adults. Basically, they use a head attached stick for touching each bliss symbols on a Bliss board. This is a difficult task for them to use this Bliss board and also multiple disabled children/adults are unable to use new technology such as send emails, chatting etc. due to their disabilities. Literature survey found that the other similar systems for Bliss symbolic language learning are also difficult for use by physically challenging persons because they are unable to access modern devices such as a computer or mobile phones directly. But in this research mainly consider about the accessibility of modern technology. Proposed Smart Bliss Board system is running on a desktop application with a head movement tracking device to select appropriate Bliss symbol automatically. The proposed system is very interactive than the existing printed Bliss symbolic board because the users (physically challenging children or teachers) can select each Bliss symbol by using moving cursor. In this project, developed an electronic wearable device for controlling the cursor movement on a computer screen using a head attached accelerometer device. After pointing or touching Bliss symbols, then the device automatically lookup and convert to the English language text and voice of the pointed Bliss symbol and then the users can send the message to the teachers. The teachers can use a desktop PC or a tablet PC to response the respective message of the users. The results showed that the significant improvement of the communication of the physically challenging children with the proposed technology over the traditional printed Bliss board. When using the proposed system, teachers do not need to interact with Bliss symbolic words. They can easily type required messages using the English language, and then it will automatically convert to the Bliss symbolic language sentence and send back to the users. This Bliss symbolic language application is designed for simplifying the reading, writing for the people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities or literacy problems. And also this application can be used internationally among many users and teachers those who do not speak the same spoken language.