Abstract
Internet has become one of the basic amenities for day-to-day living. Every human being is widely accessing the knowledge and information through internet. However, blind people face difficulties in accessing these text materials, also in using any service provided through internet. The advancement in computer based accessible systems has opened up many avenues for the visually impaired across the globe in a wide way. Audio feedback based virtual environment like, the screen readers have helped Blind people to access internet applications immensely. We describe the Voicemail system architecture that can be used by a Blind person to access e-Mails easily and efficiently. The contribution made by this research has enabled the Blind people to send and receive voice based e-Mail messages in their native language with the help of a computer.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Internet plays a vital role in today’s world of communication. Today the world is running on the basis of internet. No work can be done without use of internet. Electronic mail i.e. email is the most important part in day to day life. But some of the people in today’s world don’t know how to make use of internet, some are blind or some are illiterate. So it goes very difficult to them when to live in this world of internet. Nowadays there are various technologies available in this world like screen readers, ASR, TTS, STT, etc. but these are not that much efficient for them. Around 39 million people are blind and 246 people have low vision and also 82 of people living with blindness are 50 aged and above. We have to make some internet facilities to them so they can use internet.
Therefore this project came up as voice based email system for blinds which will help a lot to visually impaired peoples and also illiterate peoples for sending their mails.
The users of this system don’t need to remember any basic information about keyboard shortcuts as well as location of the keys. Simple mouse click operations are needed for functions making system easy to use for user of any age group. Our system provides location of where user is prompting through voice so that user doesn’t have to worry about remembering which mouse click operation he/she wants to achieve.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
There are a total number of 4.1 billion email accounts created until 2014 and there will be estimated 5.2 billion accounts by end of 2018 this makes emails the most used form of communication. The most common mail services that we use in our day to day life cannot be used by visually challenged people. This is because they do not provide any facility so that the person in front can hear out the content of the screen. As they cannot visualize what is already present on screen they cannot make out where to click in order to perform the required operations.
For a visually challenged person using a computer for the first time is not that convenient as it is for a normal user even though it is user friendly. Although there are many screen readers available then also these people face some minor difficulties. Screen readers read out whatever content is there on the screen and to perform those actions the person will have to use keyboard shortcuts as mouse location cannot be traced by the screen readers. This means two things; one that the user cannot make use of mouse pointer as it is completely inconvenient if the pointer location cannot be traced and second that user should be well versed with the keyboard as to where each and every key is located.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The main objective of this project is to create an IVR- interactive voice response email system. When using this system the computer will be prompt the user to perform specific operations to avail respective services and if the user needs to access the respective services then he/she needs to perform that operation. The new system will be designed in such a way that the user won’t require to use the keyboard alot.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this research work involves creating a system will be perfectly accessible to all types of users as it is just based on simple mouse clicks and speech inputs and there is no need to remember keyboard shortcuts. Also because of IVR facility those who cannot read need not worry as they can listen to the prompting done by the system and perform respective actions..
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of this project work is to serve as a helping tool for the vision impaired/blind users. Blind users will be able to use the software by mouse clicks and speech only. The application will convert speech to text and prompt the user to take necessary actions.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The limitations encounter in this research work includes:
- Limited time to carryout research on the subject. Not enough time to gather information for this research work.
- The epileptic nature of power supply in the country. After we have gather the little material – information for this work, there was shortage of power supply to organize our work.
- Another limitation is Finance: doing a research work definitely needs money. Shortage of funds is one of the greatest challenges we encountered during this project.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Electrical Aided: An electronic device that help particular disable been to achieve a setting goal
IVR: Interactive Voice Response
GPS– Global Position System: Is a radio navigation system.
Phonetic: Relating to the sounds of spoken language
Receiver: Person or thing who receives something.
Robot: A machine built to carry out some complex task or group of tasks especially one which can be programmed.
Text: A writing consisting of multiple glyphs, characters, symbols or sentences.
Speech: the ability to speak or to use vocalization to communicate.
System: A collection of organized things
