November 2018
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408 Reads
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9 Citations
Philippines is a country with high incidence of visually impaired students that require special needs and attention. Government, institutions, and different agencies are currently commencing assistance to cater the needs of the visually impaired students by providing basic resources among Special Education (SPED) Centers across the nation including slate and stylus, improvised tactile cards, and basic braille papers for writing. However, access to advanced assistive technologies that will intensively help beginners in basic Braille Notation remains to be a major issue. While there are commercially available braille devices, most of these are high in cost and intimidating in terms of functionalities. This study aimed to develop a portable assistive Braille Device, blended with IoT technology for basic Braille notation writing that can be accessible for students and teachers in a SPED Center. The study focused on the use of low-cost and readily available microcontroller and improvised engravable tactile system. The portable device is designed with compact and scaled six-dot, single-character braille cell for braille notation writing, where visually impaired students' kinesthetic and proprioceptive skills can be improved. With the use of Modified Nurun-Based Methodology, quantitative techniques were utilized for the analysis of the study, following the iterative modeling and testing of prototype and realizing the whole system. As a result, the study was able to develop a low-cost alternative assistive technology that can aid visually impaired students to practice and learn Braille Notation writing. The device can also serve as an alternative mean for SPED Teachers in teaching visually impaired students who are beginners in basic Braille Notation writing.