More than 90% of the world's 161 million blind and visually impaired people live in developing communities [1] . Despite the importance of literacy to employment, social well-being, and health, the literacy rate of this population is estimated at under 3% [2]. In this V-Unit research project, we will develop assistive technology to address this issue. Specifically, we will design, implement, and test an adaptive Braille writing tutor for the Mathru School for the Blind in Bangalore, India.

[In Mathru!] I'm at Mathru right now. Check out the blog at: http://brailletutor.blogspot.com

[VIPACE Meeting] On June 15, we met with members of VIPACE on the CMU campus for our first demonstration of the tutor. We had a chance to discuss the motivation of the projects and its directions, and test out the tutor. Overall, the comments were very positive and encouraging but there are some implementation issues with the E-Slate (its difficult to tell the Braille cells apart). We are looking forward to more user testing once we make these immediate changes.

Thanks to all the VIPACE members for their input, to Marina Virnik for conducting the interviews, and to Dave Feruson for helping set up equipment.

[Testing in India] Nidhi has finalized plans to go to Bangalore and Mathru in August. She will also collaborate with Microsoft Research India on the project.

[Video from Mathru] In May, we have received a very interesting video from Mathru introducing us to the school, to the experience of learning to write Braille, and to the skill levels of the students. We are thrilled to have the video and have found it very useful in designing the tutor.

In developing countries Braille is almost always written with a slate and stylus. Using these tools, Braille is written in reverse, from right to left, so that the page can be read from left to right when it is flipped over. For blind children, learning to write Braille in this manner can be a formidable process. First, children must learn mirror images of all letters, which essentially doubles the alphabet. Second, feedback is delayed until the paper is removed and then flipped over and read, so it may take significantly longer to identify mistakes and correct them. Third, children may not be able to receive the individual attention and guidance needed to learn. Finally, even the paper they use may be expensive or in limited supply.

Inspired by the LISTEN reading tutor [3], we intend to develop a robust, low-power Braille writing tutor that consists of a digital stylus that interfaces to a computer, PDA, or SimPuter. At its simplest, the tutor uses text to speech software to speak sentences to the student. As the student writes each letter on the stylus, it provides immediate audio feedback by repeating the written letters and words. The tutor will also guide writing and correct mistakes, for example by indicating the correct way to write a letter, by explaining how a letter differs from a similar one, and by choosing exercises that address the particular strengths and weaknesses of a student.

Our goals are to determine the social impacts of such a tutor: Is the tutor feasible in developing communities? How do environmental limitations affect design? Do children or adults benefit more? We also want to understand the technical challenges: Which learning techniques facilitate adaptive responses from the tutor? What types of feedback are more easily provided? To this end, we are working with the Mathru School for Blind Children near Bangalore, India to implement the tutor and study its impact.

This work will be undertaken as part of V-Unit research project. V-Unit is part of the the TechBridgeWorld initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.

Nidhi Kalra [Project Lead and Primary Software Researcher]
Nidhi is a fourth year Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute. She is keenly interested in applying technology to sustainable development and in understanding related public policy issues. Nidhi hopes to start a career in this field after completing her Ph.D. Her thesis area of research is in multirobot coordination and she is advised by Dr. Anthony Stentz. She has an MS in Robotics from the RI and received her BS in computer science from Cornell University in 2002. Nidhi is a native of India.

Tom Lauwers [Primary Hardware Researcher]
Tom is a third year Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute. He has a long-standing interest in educational robotics, as both a participant in programs like FIRST and later as a designer of a robotics course and education technology. He is currently studying curriculum development and evaluation and hopes that his study of the educational sciences will help him design better and more useful educational technologies. Tom received a BS in Electrical Engineering and a BS in Public Policy from CMU.

M. Bernardine Dias [Project Advisor]
M. Bernardine Dias is a faculty member at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon with research experience in technology education, multirobot coordination, and automated navigation. She is the founding director of the TechBridgeWorld initiative which was created in 2003 to build collaborative outreach efforts between CMU and developing communities around the world. Dr. Dias is a native of Sri Lanka. Her long-term career goal is innovating means of developing and disseminating suitable and sustainable technology for empowering developing communities.

Manuela Veloso [Project Advisor]
Manuela Veloso is a professor of Computer Science at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. She is a Fellow of AAAI, was awarded an NSF Career Award and the Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research, and is the Program Chair of IJCAI 2007. Professor Veloso, a native of Portugal, is a pioneer in planning and artificial intelligence research, a leader in robotics and computer science education, and a strong supporter of exploring the role of technology in sustainable development.

Jack Mostow [Project Advisor]
Jack Mostow is a research professor at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the director of Project LISTEN, a project to improve literacy with a novel automated Reading Tutor that listens to children read aloud. Dr. Mostow was program co-chair of AAAI-98 and has served as an editor of Machine Learning Journal and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. In 2003, he was awarded the Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence.

Illah Nourbakhsh [Project Adviser]
Illah R. Nourbakhsh is an Associate Professor of Robotics in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He was on leave for the 2004 calendar year and was at NASA/Ames Research Center serving as Robotics Group lead. He is co-founder of the Toy Robots Initiative at The Robotics Institute. His current research projects include educational and social robotics, electric wheelchair sensing devices, believable robot personality, visual navigation and robot locomotion. His past research has included protein structure prediction under the GENOME project, software reuse, interleaving planning and execution and planning and scheduling algorithms.

Gubbi Muktha [Mathru Trustee]
Gubbi Muktha is a volunteer administrator at Mathru and practices and teaches law in Bangalore. She become interested in working with disabled children when she herself became partially disabled in a traffic accident. She says "Among all my work, I love helping blind children. I am interested in bringing out the confidence and will power [of the blind] through education."

Rana Nanjappa [Asha Coordinator]
Rana Nanjappa is a member of the Central New Jersey chapter of Asha for Education, an all-volunteer international non-profit organization. Asha's primary goal is to promote basic education for under priveleged children in India. Rana is the Project Steward for the Mathru School for the Blind. He is retired from AT&T and spends his time between Banngalore, India and Morristown, NJ in the USA.

[1] "Fact sheet 282: Magnitude and causes of visual impairment," World Health Organization, November 2004.

[2] E. Helander, Prejudice and dignity: an introduction to community-based rehabilitation. New York: UNDP, 1998.

[3] J. Mostow, S. Roth, A. G. Hauptmann, and M. Kane, "A prototype reading coach that listens," in Proceedings of the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-94), 1994.

[Project Specific]
The Mathru School http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=490
Nidhi Kalra's homepage http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nidhi
Project LISTEN http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen/
TechBridgeWorld http://www.techbridgeworld.org
The V-Unit Program http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~vunit

[General]
American Foundation for the Blind http://www.afb.org
Braille Bug: All About Braille http://www.afb.org/braillebug/
Braille Writing Methods http://www.dotlessbraille.org/braillewritingmethods.htm
National Braille Press http://www.nbp.org

We would like to acknowledge and thank our sponsors for their support of the Braille Writing Tutor Project:

• The V-Unit program and TechBridgeWorld
• CMU-University of Pittsburgh-National Science Foundation IGERT Program in Assistive Technology (DGE-0333420)

These are short video clips from my stay at Mathru. They mainly focus on the tutor, but I've included pits from around the school too. You need the quicktime plugin available from the Mac website to view them.

[Children with the Tutor] The children are enthusiastic about the tutor and practice carefully.

[Teachers with the Tutor] The teachers engage in lively discussion about different aspects of the tutor and try it out for themselves.

[Arts] The children are taught singing and dancing and give performances almost weekly. Dancing in particular improves their motor skills and mobility and gives them confidence.