Anna Wojdecka

It is often assumed that blind people could never study geometry, sciences or engineering. Paradoxically, studies have shown that people who were born blind can read and make outline drawings, readily understand perspective and make figurative sketches, for example a wheel in motion.

Very few blind people study sciences and enter engineering professions. Whilst solutions exist for reading text, diagrams and graphs that are a vital part of science and engineering education are largely inaccessible to blind people. Existing solutions are mostly very expensive and require advanced preparation of learning materials. It is also difficult for blind people to draw without live feedback of how their drawing looks and where to correct it.

My project enables blind and visually impaired people to read shapes, graphs, diagrams and colours directly from paper, a text book or a sketchbook, and enables them to draw in colour. LUMO reads the surface of the page and translates colours into sound and black lines into tactile feedback. LUMO is an affordable real-time solution which makes existing learning environments more inclusive, as well as enriching the interaction between blind and sighted students. 

www.hello-lumo.com