ICT for Disabled - What ICT for Disabled - What we Academicians have we Academicians have

to offer?to offer?

ICT for Disabled - What ICT for Disabled - What we Academicians have we Academicians have

to offer?to offer?

Aniruddha ChandraECE Department, NIT Durgapur

aniruddha.chandra@ieee.org

A. Chandra, NIT Durgapur – ICT for Disabled 2

IEI DurgapurIEI DurgapurMay 17, 2008

Do we believe that this person can communicate?

Even if he can, do we really need to bother about it?

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IEI DurgapurIEI DurgapurMay 17, 2008

The answer is an emphatic

“YES”

Stephen Hawking during the press conference at the National Library of in Paris, France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles.http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stephen_Hawking_050506.jpg.

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With the help of some software developed by Walt Woltosz of Simulations Plus Inc., he can select words from a series of menus on the screen, by pressing a switch. The program could also be controlled by a switch, operated by head or eye movement.

David Mason, of Possum Inc., fitted a small portable computer and a speech synthesizer to his wheel chair. Thus he can either speak what he has written, print it out, or save it to disk.

Professor Hawking suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) which is a kind of Motor Neurone Disease (MND). He can’t speak, get off from bed, have difficulties in swallowing and even breathing.

Yet he has written two bestsellers, dozens of scientific papers, gave numerous lectures.

HOW?HOW?

Speech Synthesizer from AbleData Corporation.

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IEI DurgapurIEI DurgapurMay 17, 2008

We have seen how practicing engineers helped an academician.

Let us see how we academicians can reciprocate.

NOWNOW

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Case Study I

Z. F. Joubert, “Fingercom—an electronic communicator for the disabled,” Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, Springer, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 489-491, July 1979.

Z. F. Joubert of National Electrical Engineering Research Institute, South Africa developed a 16 segment system to display all lower and upper case alphabets as well as Arabic numerals in 1979.

Fingercross technique uses a natural writing motion, whereas normal keyboards require fine finger control to operate the individual keys.

Feedback technique is used to confirm the correctness of the character generated, thus reducing the frequency of typing errors.

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Case Study II

Researchers from Brain Computer Interface (BCI), Graz University of Technology, Austria, are analyzing electroencephalogram (EEG) that monitors brain activity. When a person with disability imagines some movement (e.g., left versus right hand; hand versus foot), the same is reflected in EEG signal patterns. They are able to extract the operation by looking at the EEG.

R. Scherer, F. Lee, A. Schlgl, R. Leeb, H. Bischof, and G. Pfurtscheller, “Toward Self-Paced Brain–Computer Communication: Navigation Through Virtual Worlds,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 55, no. 2, Part 1, pp. 675-682, Feb. 2008.

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Sounds Big, Costly, Complex, and Sophisticated.

Let us see what is going on in our own country.

SOSO

Possible in first-world developed countries.

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Rajib Mitra, “ICT Support for Disabled Persons,” DRTC-ICT Conference on Digital Learning Environment, 11th-13th Jan. 2006, DRTC, Bangalore.

The J.S.S. Polytechnic for Physically Handicapped, Mysore : This polytechnic institution was established by the J.S.S. Mahavidyapeetha, a nongovernmental education society that supports 220 educational institutions in India. With financial aid from the government of Karnataka, the polytechnic institution is linked to a network of institutions. Through this organization, students with physical disabilities will be assisted to start small businesses.

Dr. Ambedkar Institute for Physically Handicapped, Kanpur : This institute, established by the government of Uttar Pradesh, is located in Kanpur, in Northern India. It has links with major organizations in the region, including the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

The Simputer Project : In an effort to bring the Internet to the masses in India and other developing countries in line with Design-for-all, several academics and engineers have used their spare time to design an inexpensive handheld Internet appliance. The Simputer, for SIMple ComPUTER, makes the Internet accessible to illiterate populations. The device was designed by professors and students at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore.

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An alternative communication aid for people with speech impairment and neuro-motor disordersVisual, iconic language based, speech enabledCan be personalized to the cognitive ability of the userAlternative access mechanisms with scanning/ access switchesSupports 3 languages – Bengali, Hindi, and English

Sanyog Project at IIT Kharagpur (2004-05)

The system has been deployed at four centers in India, (i) Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, Kolkata, (ii) Action for Ability Development and Inclusion, New Delhi, (iii) Monovikas Kendra, Kolkata, (iv) Blind Peoples Association, Ahmedabad Winner of Da Vinci Award – Engineering Society of Detroit & Multiple Sclerosis Society

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IIT Kanpur & University of Ulster (U.K.) Collaboration(Nov. 2007)

SCIENTISTS from the University of Ulster and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur have teamed up to investigate how to develop intelligent low-cost assistive robotic devices that could help people suffering from neuro-muscular disabilities such as motor neurone disease (MND) and spinal cord injury (SCI), achieve greater independence by providing means of communicating with the external world .

The three-year £145,000 project funded by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) has the following three main objectives:

A brain-computer interface (BCI) that allows a disabled person to control a smart wheelchair and robotic manipulator combination by thinking.

A visual tracking system for operating the wheelchair as an automated guided vehicle (AGV) to provide mobility.

The development of a robotic arm for the natural execution of actions desired by the disabled user.

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.... and the Saga continues

IIIT, Hyderabad: International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad in association with National Association for the Blind (NAB) has released a screen reading software for Hindi and is developing an OCR for Indian scripts and languages.

Vidya Vrikshah: A Chennai based organization which promotes the multi-lingual IITM software developed by Professor R. Kalyanakrishnan and his students at Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.

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Thank You!for patient hearing in a weekend evening