New Reading System Helps Visually Impaired ‘See’ Graphics

“People who are blind can now read more than just words, such as graphs and graphics, following the development of an affordable digital reading system by Curtin University researchers,” goes the post in Medical News Today. “Opening up new career paths and educational opportunities for people with vision impairment, the system combines a number of pattern recognition technologies into a single platform and, for the first time, allows mathematics and graphical material to be extracted and described without sighted intervention. Senior Lecturer Dr. Iain Murray and Ph.D. student Azadeh Nazemi of Curtin's Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering developed the device to handle the extraordinary number of complex issues faced by the vision impaired when needing to read graphics, graphs, bills, bank statements and more.” Read more.