It is not a talking book;: it is more like really reading a book!

In this research we designed, developed, and tested a reading system that enables Individuals with Blindness or Severe Visual Impairment (IBSVI) to fuse audio, tactile landmarks, and spatial information in order to read. This system renders electronic text documents on iPad-type devices, and reads aloud each word touched by the user's finger. A tactile overlay on the iPad screen helps IBSVI to navigate a page, furnishing a framework of tactile landmarks to give IBSVI a sense of place on the page. As the user moves her finger along the tangible pattern of the overlay, the text on the iPad screen that is touched is rendered audibly using a text-to-speech bsynthesizer.