# Multimedia Vision for the Visually Impaired through 2D Multiarray Braille Display
## 2 Related Work  
Most studies related to the VI have commonly used touch, vibration, and recorded voices to help them detect their surroundings. In addition, when information such as text content is delivered, braille or recorded voice is used to understand the context. This section presents a few previous approaches that have used tactile methods and the related research conducted on the devices for the VI. Although there have been several approaches for the VI using braille devices, there have been limited studies that include both braille display and their applications such as eBooks. Especially, there is no real-time braille device that can display 2D images in an eBook. Therefore, this field requires to be studied in greater detail, as it can be useful as an effective method for the VI to obtain useful information from books. The goal of the presented research was to develop a standalone braille display that can help the VI interpret media content. Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to develop an eBook reader application and display, and to simulate and implement the system on both smartphone and tablet. The braille display device mentioned in this study is currently under development as a business model. In this section, we introduce the existing braille applications, available braille devices in the markets, and innovative research for the VI. [PERSON] et al. conducted a study that uses tactile graphics to create figures using braille to introduce information effectively for the VI [6]. Several previous studies have focused only on the quantitative aspect of supporting the sighted graphics producers to speed up the direct transformation. However, this study focuses on the qualitative aspect, i.e., on improving the resulting tactile graphics based on braille display. The issues regarding the transformation of figures in devices for the VI are discussed in Section 3. The study by [PERSON] presented a conceptual braille display similar to the device proposed in this study, as shown in Figure 3[7]. It comprises a \(4\times 28\) (\(row\times column\)) light emitting diode (LED) braille display (without actuators), a Perkins-style braille keyboard, a scroll wheel, and navigation buttons. Moreover, it supports Bluetooth with PC so that information can be exchanged remotely. However, this study only considers braille hardware and does not consider software such as the operating system (OS) or applications that can run in the braille display. In contrast, the method presented in this paper focuses on the implementation of eBook reader applications based on multiarray braille display for the VI. [PERSON] et al. studied a computer-based system that translates the eBook automatically into braille [8]. This method is called TactoBook, which is for displaying contents of eBook converted into braille and transferred on prototype devices via USB. While there are some inconveniences with transferring data to braille display by a separate storage device, it has simple interfaces for users and easy-to-carry advantages. Additionally, several studies have been conducted to help the VI read books. For instance, [PERSON] conducted a study to better serve DAISY, an eBook format for people with reading [9]. The study evaluates the ease of reading with other experts based on the service interface being provided to the disabled at LG Sangnam Library in Korea. These evaluation data complement the existing DAISY player (e.g., DAISY viewer) by re-designing and developing a new DAISY player. This study is useful in solving many of the inconveniences that previous DAISY viewers experienced. However, this device is not compatible or portable because it is only accessible to the PC used in the library. Figure 2: Conceptual diagram of the proposed eBook reader application. [PERSON] et al. at Sookmyung Women's University implemented a DAISY viewer into the smartphone [10; 11]. The DAISY v2.02 and v3.0 viewers are supported using smartphones so that people with reading disabilities can easily read DAISY eBooks anytime and anywhere.