Major features of Accessible-Coconut.

 Accessible-Coconut team has made a serious effort to address the major challenges caused by visual impairment.

As we are aware a visually challenged person face grave difficulties in  reading and writing in the sighted way. Both problems are solved in an ingenious manner.

1. The screen reader used in AC is Orca and the speech engine is E speak. User can opt for other speech engines like i.b.m. via voice or Cepstral etc.

 

2. Linux intelligent OCR solution Lios.

Lios is a software solution developed by the Coconut team to address the reading problem of the visually challenged. One can read printed books in almost all the Indian languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, and of course English,using a scanner and the laptop.

 

All the libraries in the country are opened before the visually impaired.

Lios has the capacity to convert  text or image, PDF in to text and also convert text in to audio files.

 

2. Second major challenge is that of writing the ordinary script.

Sharada-Braille-Writer (SBW) is an application to produce text using only six keys in a Perkins braille mode. It is a software developed by state council of education research and training Kerala and Keltron, and developer  Nalin sathyan.  SBW can use all the grade 2 and 3 contractions in  English and Malayalam and again user can create his own abbreviations in any languages listed in the application. SBW  has great potential to be developed as a shorthand editor.

 

3. i-bus braille.

While SBW is a text editor, the same has been developed to use in a system wide manner later with the support of Google. At the moment one can type in any application including Firefox and like using  a six key manner.

 

4. Tux type with speech and tux type braille.

Definitely the major impediment before the visually challenged i is familiarization of the key board.

To address this issue The coconut team has added speech support to one well known application tux type. One can practice typing skill in different languages using tux type. It has a training module as well as game module.

 

5. Tux type-braille.

Tux type-braille can be used to practice six-key (brailler) mode of typing. As in the case of tux type it has a training and game modules.

 

6. Accessible music player.

 LMMS is a music player with speech support. One can play different instruments using this    software.

7. Accessible chess.

X board is a software for playing chess.

8. Tux-Maths.

Tux-Maths is a tool for developing maths skills with full speech support.

9. Artha

Artha is an English to English dictionary. User can find out the meaning while reading the passage. After selecting the word using Control + Shift + Right arrow, press Alt + Control +  W and Artha will bring the meaning.