Text editing tool for visually impaired people

A group of students from Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences had an idea to build a program to support blind people to edit documents on computers.

Dang Uncle Van (right) at the Vietnam Creative Day 2006. Photo: MT The project to attend the " Vietnam Creative Day 2006 " contest is taking place in Hanoi.

Mr. Dang Uncle Van, the leader of the student group, said the software named MATABraille was born to meet the needs of indispensable computers of those with visual disabilities.

Current solutions, such as the NDC software of Scitec Center, have partly helped blind people exploit the power of computers. But the program is developed independently so users still have to compose text from another program and paste it into the application to perform the support function. In addition, this program also does not support multi-lingual text, no math, chemical formulas, and inflexibility in expanding databases .

The group's MATABraille software will help blind people work with a single program. The system is integrated into Microsoft Word, utilizing and harnessing the available power of this application to turn Microsoft Word into a drafting program for the visually impaired.

The program has the ability to identify and pronounce many languages ​​such as Vietnamese and English. Users can adjust reading speed, reading and spell checking. The software also provides the function of switching between bright letters and Braille (Braille), support printing with Braille printers.

In addition, the program allows to expand the database, incorporating special symbols such as chemical symbols, mathematics . Users can look up the dictionary, practice typing on this application.

Participating in this " Vietnam Innovation Day 2006 " contest, Van's group hopes to find funding to complete the program and put it into trial run. The MATABraille toolkit team will be released next year.

Mr. Thi