The paper titled, See Through – A Text-entry Method for the Visually Challenged, illustrated a novel implementation of a new text entry keypad for the visually challenged people based on a relatively new method called the Vowel Navigation Method.

“We took into account the difficulties faced by the visually challenged people to type on a basic mobile phone and we used this as a motivation for us to develop a keypad to serve the society,” the students shared.

In addition, the trio made use of automatic word prediction and task-aware dictionaries to make it more user-friendly. The keys functions defined were as follows:-

* – Next prediction word, # – Change between uppercase, normal and numeric, 1 – Cycle through punctuation, 2 – Traverse vertically, 3 – Repeat the last suggested word, 4 – Traverse horizontally, 5 – Commit the suggested word, 6 – Traverse horizontally, 7 – Read the contextual meaning of the selected word, 8 – Traverse vertically, 9 – Emoticon and 0 – Space.

The contest saw participation from nearly 800 abstracts from over twenty five colleges across the nation. After being one among the 180 shortlisted innovative ideas, the team was invited to present their idea in the grand finale. The grand finale

comprised of a Paper Presentation round and Business Model round. Their idea with a humanitarian touch was selected as the best idea presented in the Software Engineering category. The business model of the idea was premiered in front of the top management executives of Bosch India. The team won laurels in the final show down among the last five groups and each team member was awarded with an iPad Mini and a Certificate of Merit. The honors were given away by the Regional President, Sustainability and Innovations, Bosch India. The participants of the final round had an opportunity to visit the Bosch Manufacturing Plant in Bangalore.

Bindu K. R., Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science Engineeringguided the students. She reviewed the conceptual design and clarified queries that the students had. She counseled the students on how to present their idea.

The words of the seasoned campaigner assisted them well to suit in to their niche as they were relatively new to competitions of this type. “We presented our idea and the judges were really impressed. They also suggested slight changes in our approach for betterment of the product. We thank Bindu ma’am for her continuous support and motivation. We thank Bosch and Amrita for providing us with such an opportunity. Our families and friends have been supportive all along”, shared the euphoric students.

November 28, 2013
School of Engineering, Coimbatore