Project VISIBILITY
Visually Impaired Society Improvement By Including Language speech Input to eYed website
Introduction
The Internet has become an essential means for people to acquire information and knowledge. Today, in the 21st century, the Internet has eased our life to a significant extent. Unfortunately, the benefits of this mighty tool are still away from visually impaired people who find difficulty accessing the web. Approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide are visually impaired. Traditionally, people with vision impairment used to use the braille script method for reading and writing purposes. Later as the technology evolved, recordings and audiotapes began to access the information present in books, magazines, and newspapers. Over the years, people built different tools and technologies that can assist the blind in reaching out to the outside world. But the question of accessing the Internet still arises.
Now in the present time, web technology has become the vital source of information, and this information must be accessible by everyone, whether an ordinary person or visually impaired person. To make information accessible to the visually impaired person, technology like speech recognition can help them access the websites easily. It would be easy for them to surf the website as they can provide an audio input and can receive the desired result via voice output. This kind of approach can help visually impaired people interact with the website using voice input. Voice output will help read the website’s contents and allow the user to traverse from one link to another, thus solving the visually impaired problem of accessibility to technology.
Need
Technology has made life simpler for everyone, including visually impaired people. Cell phones and tablets have revolutionized how blind or visually impaired people interact and use technology. But when it comes to a specific part of technology, like accessing a website, they still cannot see what’s in the website and interact with it accordingly. The majority of visually impaired people can’t see entirely, and existing assistive equipment is expensive. Most blind users cannot afford specialized software like screen reader access, which helps them read, as the installation is challenging and expensive.
The need of the hour is to develop a website accessible to the visually impaired, using technology like speech recognition to help access and interact with the website easily. It will become easy for visually impaired people to surf the website through voice input, and as an output, the website content will be read aloud. This approach will allow the user to traverse from one link to another, thus solving the visually impaired problem of ‘Accessibility to technology’. The project would empower blind people and make them digitally literate.
Motivation
The digital revolution has not touched everyone in an equivalent way. In a world where the next great invention is expected to appear soon, blind and visually impaired people have been left behind. Nowadays, the government provides almost every information like the launching of new schemes, policies implementation, etc., via the website. Motivation for the project arose when we saw that normal people could access the website and get their required information without hassle. But when it gets to visually impaired people, they can’t access the information even when the same holds significant value for them. We decided to make a sample website that contains the technologies that will help the website become accessible and help blind people in interacting with the website easily by removing the technological barrier.
Scope
Our project covers visually impaired or blind people as a scope of the project. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in blind assisting technology, like speech recognition for people with disabilities, all over the world. Because of the expected increase in the proportion of the population with a visual disability, particularly in low and middle-income countries like India, the need for and demand for such technologies will grow over time. Several systems have been developed to assist visually impaired people and improve their quality of life. Unfortunately, the majority of these systems have limited capabilities. Website assistance via speech recognition is one such technological approach that can benefit blind individuals to access the information available on the website and help them to navigate over the website.
Beneficiary
Our project will benefit both the government and the visually impaired people.
People with visual impairment will be able to access the information via the website, which will help them in becoming digitally literate. The amount of value disabled workers bring to the world far exceeds the commercial benefits. When it comes to managing people with visual disabilities, assistive technology is a must-have tool. Such people require assistive technology for a variety of activities, including mobility, daily living, reading and writing, and employment, among others. In terms of technology, the project will help them access the website using speech recognition technology.
On the other hand, the project will also help the government as information now can easily be transferred to the visually impaired people who were not considered much before. Government can now directly provide the information about the schemes, their implementation and pass all the necessary information to the visually impaired, which will, in turn, help the visually impaired people know better about government policies and how they can be helped.
Challenging The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
On December 3, 2015, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) started the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) as a national campaign to achieve universal accessibility for PwDs(Persons with Disabilities). It is divided into three major verticals: the built environment, transportation, and the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) ecosystem.
Web Accessibility is a part of the ICT ecosystem in which people with disabilities can learn, understand, navigate, and interact with the web and then thus contribute to the web. WCAG is a combination of four principles that a website should follow, i.e., perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. According to WCAG guidelines, speech reader access must be used in every government website to make it accessible for visually impaired people. But the question arises how will blind people use speech reader access? Installing speech reader access is challenging, and an impossible task for the blind people. Speech reader access needs to be installed from a third-party company, and all the installation steps must be followed, which makes it a complex task. Though the advantages of using speech reader might surpass the drawbacks, there are technological barriers that restrict or limit their usage. The development of technology should offer design adaptability to enhance its functionality, e.g., computer screen readers must be implemented in the website design in a specific layout to function and simultaneously interact with the user. This implementation is done in our project, using speech recognition technology.
When websites, web technologies, or web tools are badly designed, they can create barriers that exclude people from using the web. Holding onto the guidelines partially and the suggestions, an effective tool can be implemented which benefits the visually impaired people. According to the guidelines, the Website and apps should be designed and developed in such a way that they are accessible by everyone, irrespective of their hardware, software, language, culture, location, physical, or mental ability.
As a suggestion, we created a sample website that has audio input and output as one of its main features. As soon as the visually impaired people start the website, the audio will be played, and all the links to be traversed will be read aloud. After the audio stops, a person can directly tell his/her required option, and the user will be redirected to the option’s page, and the contents of the page will be spoken as voice output. This approach will help visually impaired people to surf the website easily and not download any complex and challenging software which is becoming a technological barrier for them.
How to Use
When the website is loaded, introductory audio plays at the beginning. The audio introduces all options/links available on the website. As the audio stops, the user can select the desired option that he/she wants information on using voice input. The page will redirect to the user-selected option, and the contents of the page will be read aloud. If the user wants to stop, he/she can say “stop” and the website will be stopped with an explanation audio that the website is stopped and can be resumed again by “double-clicking” on any part of the website screen. Lastly, the users are requested to speak only after the audio has stopped playing; otherwise, it might hinder the website’s functionality.
Tools and Technologies
- HTML,CSS,Bootstrap
Bootstrap isn’t new in the front end. Bootstrap allows us to make an elegant-looking website in a short period. We chose Bootstrap to keep our website well scalable to all viewports or screen sizes. Our whole mission was to make this website or project reach as many people as possible, no matter what device they may use.
- JavaScript ES6
- Speech Recognition API
These days JavaScript is supported in every modern browser. In totality, Client-side scripting was an important part of our project. The events used in JavaScript are basic as to ensure easy accessibility to the target audience. We use the speech-to-text conversion API of JavaScript because of the fact of it being highly accurate and providing a good user experience. The converted speech, along with the measure of confidence of JavaScript, is later sent to the express server for operations.
3. Backend Technology
The project has been implemented in two different backend technologies.
- Django Web Framework
- NodeJS / ExpressJS
4. Python
Python is a core part of our project back-end because of its robustness and it provides numerous open sources libraries, that helps us ease our task.
- Web scraping with Beautifulsoup, Requests and Urllib
- Text to speech using GTTs (Google Text to Speech) API
- Python packages like Re
Demonstration
Conclusion
Vision is such an important sensory modality in humans, its loss has an impact on practically all activities of daily living and lowering a person’s quality of life, general lifestyle, and career. As a result, technology can improve accessibility to the outside world and also can enhance the quality of life which has a significant social influence. The first and most important strategy for improving assistive technological services for people with visual impairments in India is to raise awareness. The Indian Constitution guarantees equality, liberty, justice, and dignity to all people and implicitly mandates an inclusive society. With the increased consideration of quality characteristics in all sectors of life, including availability, access, and provision of comprehensive services to the disabled, it is important to examine the government’s role in upholding the common people’s aspirations and commitment. The notion of disability rehabilitation focuses on the blind people and list down the Government of India’s (GOI) actions, programs/schemes, institutional structures, and initiatives and the incentives and advantages to blind people. But understanding the complexity involved in the accessibility of websites, web applications, and software, users need to have a sufficient level of digital literacy to use them. Assistance is a must, and people must be made aware of customization and interactive services that can help them use the service. Hence digital care is essential to help sight-impaired individuals get involved in the world around them. The boundaries of disability are set by environmental barriers to society.
References
1. Who.int. 2021. Vision impairment and blindness. [online] Available at: <https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
2. Id-book.com. 2021. What is it like to be a blind Internet user?. [online] Available at: <http://www.id-book.com/preece/whatisitlike.html> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
3. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228800390_Speech_Technologies_for_Blind_and_Low_Vision_Persons> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
4. PixelPlex. 2021. How Do Blind People Use the Internet? Assistive Technology & Accessible Design. [online] Available at: <https://pixelplex.io/blog/how-do-blind-people-use-the-internet/> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
5. The Conversation. 2021. Sight-impaired people want to use technology but are excluded by cost and accessibility — new research. [online] Available at: <https://theconversation.com/sight-impaired-people-want-to-use-technology-but-are-excluded-by-cost-and-accessibility-new-research-103882> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
6. Website, M., Guides, P., Guides, T., Website, H., Blog, H., Store, H., Name, H., Website, H., (Beginner’s), A., (Intermediate), A., Tools, U., Reviews, M., Hosting, B., Hosting, B., Hosting, B., Builders, B., Builders, B., Platforms, B., Software, B., Makers, B., Review, B., Review, H., Review, S., Hosting, W., Builders, W., Articles, R., Website, 3., (2021), O., Traffic, 5., Services, 9., all, B. and Us, A., 2021. How to Build a User-Friendly Website for the Visually Impaired in 2021. [online] WebsiteSetup. Available at: <https://websitesetup.org/websites-for-visually-impaired/> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
7. Senjam, S., 2021. Assistive Technology for People with Visual Loss.
8. ResearchGate. 2021. (PDF) An insight into assistive technology for the visually impaired and blind people: state-of-the-art and future trends. [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312158644_An_insight_into_assistive_technology_for_the_visually_impaired_and_blind_people_state-of-the-art_and_future_trends> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
9. Web.guidelines.gov.in. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://web.guidelines.gov.in/assets/gigw-manual.pdf> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
10. Web.guidelines.gov.in. 2021. Tools and Resources | Guidelines For Indian Government Websites. [online] Available at: <https://web.guidelines.gov.in/tools-and-resources#screen-reader-access> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
11. Irisvision.com. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://irisvision.com/benefits-of-assistive-technology-devices-for-organizations/> [Accessed 24 August 2021].
Github Project
(https://github.com/pulkitkhandelwal29/Project-Visibility-Django)
2. Project Implemented on NodeJS/ExpressJS
(https://github.com/Anunay-Anand/Project-Visibility-ExpressJS)
Github Profiles
- Pulkit Khandelwal (https://github.com/pulkitkhandelwal29)
- Anunay Anand (https://github.com/Anunay-Anand)
- Kumar Kislay (https://github.com/kislay960)
- Yash Mishra (https://github.com/theyashmishra)
