E-book Reader for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Abstract

This project, E-book Reader for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which is an Android application, is proposed by Hong Kong Blind Union. This Android application enables blind users and users with various sight problems, for instance, partial sight or color deficits, to enjoy the fun of reading as any other people with normal eyesight. Via this mobile application, for the former group of users, they can read by listening to audio version of books/passages, while for the later group of users, they can read by both listening or seeing through the designed view shown on the mobile displayed screen. Setting function is offered to change speed, pitch or volume of the audio version, change the view displayed and browse online dictionary. Also, bookmark function is provided as well which enable users to add more than one bookmark for bookmarking when users want to. Based on a consideration of the ease to categorize books/passages for the users, an original design would be used-tagging function, which allow users to attach different tags to these reading materials. Afterwards, users simply find out books/passages via their tags. To implement above functions, the application is coded in Java in an integrated development environment (IDE) named Eclipse, which contains a base workspace and an extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment. The layouts, which define the visual structure for user interface of this application, are declared in XMI or created programmatically. Text-to-speech technology is used to transform the text to audio format. SQLite Database management system, android default database, is applied to build up the bookmark and tag function.