An Embedded Application for Degraded Text Recognition

This paper describes a mobile device which tries to give the blind or visually impaired access to text information. Three key technologies are required for this system: text detection, optical character recognition, and speech synthesis. Blind users and the mobile environment imply two strong constraints. First, pictures will be taken without control on camera settings and a priori information on text (font or size) and background. The second issue is to link several techniques together with an optimal compromise between computational constraints and recognition efficiency. We will present the overall description of the system from text detection to OCR error correction.