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Abstract: In today’s world communication has become so easy due to integration of communication technologies with internet. However the visually challenged people find it very difficult to utilize this technology because of the fact that using them requires visual perception. Even though many new advancements have been implemented to help them use the computers efficiently no naïve user who is visually challenged can use this technology as efficiently as a normal naïve user can do that is unlike normal users they require some practice for using the available technologies. This paper aims at developing an email system that will help even a naïve visually impaired person to use the services for communication without previous training. The system will not let the user make use of keyboard instead will work only on mouse operation and speech conversion to text. Also this system can be used by any normal person also for example the one who is not able to read. The system is completely based on interactive voice response which will make it user friendly and efficient to use
INTRODUCTION
Internet is considered as a major storehouse of information in today’s world. No single work can be done without the help of it. It has even become one of the de facto methods used in communication. And out of all methods available email is one of the most common forms of communication especially in the business world. [4] However not all people can use the internet. This is because in order to access the internet you would need to know what is written on the screen. If that is not visible it is of no use.[2] This makes internet a completely useless technology for the visually impaired and illiterate people. Even the systems that are available currently like the screen readers TTS and ASR [1] do not provide full efficiency to the blind people so as to use the internet. As nearly 285 million people worldwide are estimated visually impaired it become necessary to make internet facilities for communication usable for them also.[5] Therefore we have come up with this project in which we will be developing a voice based email system which will aid the visually impaired people who are naive to computer systems to use email facilities in a hassle free manner. The users of this system would not need to have any basic information regarding keyboard shortcuts or where the keys are located. All functions are based on simple mouse click operations making it very easy for any type of user to use this system.
Also the user need not worry about remembering which mouse click operation he/she needs to perform in order to avail a given service as the system itself will be prompting them as to which click will provide them with what operations.
II. EXISTING SYSTEM
There are a total number of 4.1 billion email accounts created until 2014 and an there will be estimated 5.2 billion accounts by end of 2018.[4] this makes emails the most used form of communication.
The most common mail services that we use in our day to day life cannot be used by visually challenged people. This is because they do not provide any facility so that the person in front can hear out the content of the screen. As they cannot visualize what is already present on screen they cannot make out where to click in order to perform the required operations.[3]
For a visually challenged person using a computer for the first time is not that convenient as it is for a normal user even though it is user friendly. Although there are many screen readers available then also these people face some minor difficulties. Screen readers read out whatever content is there on the screen and to perform those actions the person will have to use keyboard shortcuts as mouse location cannot be traced by the screen readers. This means two things; one that the user cannot make use of mouse pointer as it is completely inconvenient if the pointer location cannot be traced and second that user should be well versed with the keyboard as to where each and every key is located. A user is new to computer can therefore not use this service as they are not aware of the key locations.
Another drawback that sets in is that screen readers read out the content in sequential manner and therefore user can make out the contents of the screen only if they are in basic HTML format. Thus the new advanced web pages which do not follow this paradigm in order to make the website more user-friendly only create extra hassles for these people.
All these are some drawbacks of the current system which we will overcome in the system we are developing.
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed system is based on a completely novel idea and is nowhere like the existing mail systems. The most important aspect that has been kept in mind while developing the proposed system is accessibility. A web system is said to be perfectly accessible only if it can be used efficiently by all types of people whether able or
disable. The current systems do not provide this
accessibility. Thus the system we are developing is
completely different from the current system. Unlike
current system which emphasizes more on user
friendliness of normal users, our system focuses more on
user friendliness of all types of people including normal
people visually impaired people as well as illiterate
people.
The complete system is based on IVR- interactive voice
response. When using this system the computer will be
prompting the user to perform specific operations to avail
respective services and if the user needs to access the
respective services then he/she needs to perform that
operation.
One of the major advantages of this system is that user
won’t require to use the keyboard. All operations will be
based on mouse click events. Now the question that arises
is that how will the blind users find location of the mouse
pointer.
As particular location cannot be tracked by the blind user
the system has given the user a free will to click blandly
anywhere on the screen. Which type of click will perform
which function will be specified by the IVR. Thus user
need not worry about location of the mouse at all.
This system will be perfectly accessible to all types of
users as it is just based on simple mouse clicks and speech
inputs and there is no need to remember keyboard
shortcuts. Also because of IVR facility those who cannot
read need not worry as they can listen to the prompting
done by the system and perform respective actions.
IV. DESIGN
A. User Interface Design:
The user interface is designed using Adobe Dreamweaver
CS3. The complete website focuses more on efficiency in
understanding the IVR rather than the look and feel of the
system as the system is primarily developed for the blind
people to whom the look and feel won’t be of that primary
importance as the efficiency of understanding the
prompting would be.
B. Database Design:
Our system maintains a database for user validation and
storing mails of the user. There are a total of five tables.
The relationship between them is assigned after much
consideration. The E-R diagram of our complete system is
depicted in Fig 1. The Inbox, Sent-Mail and Trash
schemas will store all mails of the respective service that
belongs to that particular user.
C. System Design:
Fig. 2 depicts the complete system design. It is the level-2
data flow diagram which gives complete detailed flow of
events in the system. As we can see all operations are
performed by mouse click events only. Also at some
places voice input is required.