"SPARSH" is an adaptive device that has been designed to meet the needs of blind & blind- deaf students in today\'s environment. It is also a complete Braille device for Braille learners & their teacher.

The basic idea of our project is that whatever a normal person will type on its personal computer will be converted in the Braille on the board made by us, which the blind -deaf students will be able to sense. For students who are only blind, text will be converted into sound.

In this project micro controller based data acquisition & control system will be implemented for text to speech conversion using Atmel micro controller 89c52.This system will read the keyboard of 4 x 4 key matrix & convert the data from scanned code to ASCII code & display it on the LCD for information purpose. Since the intention of the project is to convert the data in Braille from it convert the data in a 3 x 2 matrix form using look up table approach & send the data on port2, 3 to drive the relays. The relays are driven by a latch, using 74573. Depending on the key press the valves will be operated so that a blind person can read the data entered by a normal person. To demonstrate this effect a LED matrix is connected to show the Braille language. In practice when this system is manufactured the tiny solenoid valves like a dot matrix printer head will be used to sense the data by the blind person. In order to hear the data in speech form, in this project a text to speech converter sp0256 circuit is used. The details of these circuits are explained in the subsequent section.

This micro controller also has the serial port so that we can interface this system to PC for down loading the data.