Renz Carlo Salanga, Christian dela Cruz, and Nelson Yanez, BSIT students of the Mid La Union Campus developed an assistive technology for the visually impaired in February 2019 as an entry to the city hackaton and garnered second place. It was also presented in November 2019 in National Android Master and garnered 5th place.
This mobile application named “B.L.I.N.D : Bright Light in Navigating the Dark,” was designed to help the visually impaired or the blind to make sense of their environment.
It reads textual information on papers and produces an audible translation of the text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and TTS (Text-to-Speech) system. It is also capable of classifying images like television, hand, bird, pot, tableware, Philippine banknotes and many more. The mobile application can be operated via voice commands and all of the features are performed on the device offline.
As seen on the reviews, those who have used the app describe it as “Nice and friendly for PWD’s,” and “Awesome”.
This app was featured in De Ocampos’ (2020) article DID YOU KNOW: THERE’S ALREADY A PH APP A LA START-UP’S NOONGIL? in KStreet Manila which can be read through this link: http://www.kstreetmanila.com/2020/11/did-you-know-theres-already-a-ph-app-a-la-start-ups-noongil/?fbclid=IwAR1FW5KKXP-5H2GQgusk5Bi_azixNzpkBILBoQQCnt9zm7tNtpwj19ZqJoY
Mr. Manny Hortizuela served as the developers’ adviser. The app can be downloaded from Play Store. (Ayu)