International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering

Abstract: Visual impairment significantly restricts independent access to printed and digital textual information, affecting millions worldwide. Traditional assistive solutions suffer from high costs, limited language support, and dependence on specialized hardware. This paper presents a comprehensive multilingual OCR-based assistive system designed to enable visually impaired individuals to access textual content across linguistic boundaries. The system integrates optical character recognition, automated translation, and text-to-speech synthesis into a unified web-based platform supporting six languages including English and major Indian regional languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada). Implementation utilizes FastAPI framework for asynchronous processing, Tesseract OCR engine configured with language-specific models, dual-fallback translation architecture ensuring 99.2% service availability, and Google Text-to-Speech for natural audio generation. Image preprocessing techniques including grayscale conversion and adaptive thresholding enhance recognition accuracy by 20-25%, particularly effective for complex Indic scripts. The system accepts images through web-based interface, processes them through sequential pipeline of enhancement, text extraction, translation, and speech synthesis, delivering comprehensive output within 4.6 seconds average processing time. Experimental results demonstrate 95% OCR accuracy for printed text across supported languages, successful translation with dual-fallback reliability, and high user satisfaction ratings (4.8/5 for ease of use, 4.7/5 for audio clarity, 4.6/5 overall). The framework addresses critical accessibility gaps in multilingual environments while maintaining cost-effectiveness through open-source libraries and web-based deployment accessible from standard computing devices.

Keywords: Optical Character Recognition, Assistive Technology, Multilingual Processing, Text-to-Speech Synthesis, Accessibility, Computer Vision, Visual Impairment, Natural Language Processing, Image Processing, Web-based Application

Downloads: | DOI: 10.17148/IJARCCE.2026.151101