The Department of Computer Engineering has finished the discussion of its student’s graduation projects for the first semester of the academic year 2011-2012, and of the many projects that have been submitted, three were distinguished and unique in the sense that they were centered on the idea of facilitating the daily interaction of the people speech and visual disabilities.

Project number one was made by Faisal Eleiwi and Omar Za’rour who succeeded in building a system that translates the sign language of the people with speech and visual disabilities into a written text or an audio material. The system works when a person performs some gesture movements in front of a special camera which detects the data and sends it to a computer that analyzes the input and presents the final output. The challenge that the two students have encountered while building the system was the need to create a system that is able to understand full sentences and not just separate words; the system works with high accuracy and expands its dictionary through continuous training and use. The system aims to facilitate the life of the people with disability and make their integration with others easier.

The second project was made by Dima Al-Kilani and Rasmiya Samarah. The project is an internet browser that was specially designed to serve the people with partial or total visual impairment. The basic idea of the project is to offer a chance for users with visual impairment to take advantage of the many services and features that the internet offers. The need for such program stems out from the fact that the number of visually impaired people around the world is very significant and that the internet has become a very basic part of people’s daily life.

This program translates input speech into text which is then converted into speech again (This feature supports both Arabic and English). In addition to this, it reads and analyzes incoming data from the server to the browser through organizing it in such a way that enables the user to build a clear picture of the website he/she is browsing making the whole internet experience faster and more exciting.

Mr. Ahmed Hussein, Director of the Computer Center for the Visually-Impaired at An-Najah, spoke about the problems that the Center faces with respect to the programs used there and added that the Al-Kilani’s and Samarah’s project is of substantial importance to the visually-impaired.

The third project was made by Abdel Atheem Al-Bukhari and Ala’ Al-Hudhud who built a system for the visually-impaired. The system scans the place where the person is located and builds a 3D image of this person. The image is then transferred to a computer where a map of the place is created; the computer then controls a wheeled walker which moves automatically and overcomes all the obstacles that might lie ahead. The user can also send voice commands to the walker to perform various movements such as moving forward, turning around or moving backwards during which special sensors in the system checks if there are any obstacles that might be near the user and guide him/her to another path.

The three projects were supervised by Dr. Ashraf Armoush from the Department of Computer Engineering at An-Najah.