Design of Cost-effective Printer to Print tactile Images for the Visually Impaired

Abstract

Teaching text for visually impaired people is not a difficult task. But, learning the subjects like Science, Geography etc requires the perception of two dimensional images. This is very difficult for the visually impaired people. They cannot be easily taught images and graphics. In developed countries, the visually impaired students are taught about the images from their childhood days. So, they are familiar with image representations. One way to teach graphics is to use tactile images. Tactile graphics allow the visually impaired to perceive two-dimensional imagery easily. But, printing tactile graphics is costlier. Hence, the visually impaired people in developing and under developing countries grow up without any exposure to tactile images. To address this issue, the paper proposes a new approach for designing a new printer that helps to print high quality tactile images with low cost.