iAssist – An Intelligent Reading Assistant for Visually Impaired

Abstract

Vision is a crucial human sense, and visually impaired
persons encounter challenges in reading and comprehending text.
While various devices and assistive technologies, including
advanced mobile applications, have been developed to aid
visually impaired individuals in reading, these solutions are often
expensive and not universally accessible. Moreover, relying on
mobile phones for text reading may pose discomfort, especially
for elderly individuals with visual impairments. This proposed
project aims to design a system that could assist the visually
impaired individuals in reading the text using TTS (Text-toSpeech) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technologies.
The integrated camera module captures the text, and image
processing is carried out using OpenCV coded in python. OCR is
employed to extract text from images, which is then articulated
by the TTS conversion unit. Additionally, the system
incorporates language translation functionality and aids users in
identifying the objects in their immediate environment using
Yolov9. The system comprises a camera, Raspberry Pi, power
bank and earphones. This assistive device empowers blind and
partially sighted individuals to gain autonomy in reading printed
texts without relying on external assistance.