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Voice based E-mail for the Visually Impaired

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 175– No. 16, September 2020

Voice based E-mail for the Visually Impaired

Aishwarya Belekar, Shivani Sunka, Neha Bhawar, Sudhir Bagade
Department of Computer Science & Technology,
Usha Mittal Institute of Technology,
SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai, India

ABSTRACT 2. LITERATURE SURVEY

The increased use of technology and it’s limitless opportunities In this section, we present the detailed literature survey of the
have made it inevitable for the present generations to apply the present similar techniques.
Internet technology to the fullest. Email being one of the most
widely used features of the Internet serves as the basic In paper [2], a voice based email architecture is proposed
prerequisite. Apart from normal users, the visually impaired which will help blind people to access email. The existing
one’s face challenges when it comes to using the internet in system is not user friendly for blind people as it does not give
spite of the availability of various screen readers. This paper any audio feedback to readout contents for them. The proposed
thus aims to provide voice assistance for them. Along with system makes use of Speech Recognition, Interactive Voice
Email, voice assistance for various simple yet important Response and Mouse Click events. Also, for additional security
applications used on a daily basis such as Calculator, Music purposes voice recognition is used for user verification. In this
etc. system, Registration is the first module. This module will
collect complete information of the user by prompting the user
Keywords to what details need to be entered. The second module is the
Voice based Email, Visually impaired, Speech-to-text, text-to- login module in which the system will ask the user to provide
speech, Speech recognition. user name and password. This is done through voice
commands.
1. INTRODUCTION Another voice sample is asked for performing the voice
The most common mail services that are used in our day to day verification. Then the user is redirected to the inbox page once
life cannot be used by visually challenged people. To make login is done. After login, users can perform normal operations
these systems convenient for these people who are visually of a mailing system. System options are: Compose, Inbox, Sent
challenged there are various technologies provided to them like Mail, Trash. The user can switch between these using voice
screen reader, automatic speech recognizer, speech to text and commands.
text to speech, braille keyboard, etc. However, these
technologies are not that much useful for those people as it In paper [3], proposed the system that relies on a voice
could not give the proper response like a normal system.[1] command based system unlike the existing mail system. The
complete system is primarily based on speech to text
The objective of Voice Based Email for Visually Impaired is to commands. Once using this system the application will be
help challenge one’s access mails easily and efficiently. prompting the user to speak specific commands to avail
This application is based on using speech-to-text and text-to- respective services and if the user wants to access the
speech converters, thus enabling everyone to control their mail respective services the user needs to speak that command. This
accounts using their voice only and be able to read, send, and application makes use of IMAP (Internet Message Access
perform all the other useful tasks. The system will prompt the Protocol).It is an Internet standard protocol used by email
user with voice commands to perform certain action and the clients to retrieve clients to retrieve email messages from a
user will respond to the same. mail server over a TCP/IP connection. The Main activity
Screen will be the First screen to be displayed on start of the
So here put to use are the Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech app. This screen waits for the user to press the button so that
technologies using .net framework. the system will start accepting voice commands. And this is a
The Speech-to-Text also known as Automatic Speech full sized button so they can press anywhere on the screen.
Recognition converts spoken speech into text, which helps Then using Voice commands users can send, read emails.
compose emails as an easy task. In paper [4], the system uses mainly three technologies:
The Text-to-Speech module gives audio output of the mail ● Speech to text
received, the sender, the subject and the body of the mail is
read out by the system. ● Text to Speech.
Along with it, the aim is to provide assistance to use ● Interactive Voice Response.
fundamental applications like My Computer, Word, Notepad,
etc. When the user visits the site for the first time he/she would
need to register through voice commands. Also after
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents registration, the user's voice will also be recorded and stored in
the literature survey. In section 3, we proposed our system for the database. And the user will get an Id and password. After
the visually impaired. Implementation details are presented in login, the user can access the mail option. In this system. The
section 4, and Conclusion is in section 5. user interface is designed using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. The
complete website mainly focuses on efficiency in
understanding. Also there is a contact us page where the user

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 175– No. 16, September 2020
can suggest any suggestion or any help if they need. designed in such a way that a blind user can easily use it
without in-depth knowledge of operating touch screen
In paper [5], have proposed an email system which can be interfaces.
accessed easily by blind people. The use of Speech to Text
convertor, Text to speech convertor and Viterbi Algorithm are Results: The results reflect that Tetra Mail is a better
taken into consideration.. The algorithmic rule works with the alternative for blind users due to its consistent and blind-
technique that the system detects the foremost acceptable word friendly interface design. The results of this prototype
once the user spells it so matches the word that's guessed with implementation show an improved user experience, accuracy in
the particular word that's pronounced. The user needs to task completion, and better control over touch screen interfaces
register to the website when they visit the site for the first time. in performing basic activities of managing emails. The results
This system reduces some drawbacks of the existing system. demonstrate that Tetra Mail is an accessibility-inclusive email
The drawback of this system is that the efficiency of the client enabling blind people to have a better user interaction
Viterbi algorithm decreases as the number of errors increases experience and minimal cognitive overload in managing
as well as it requires more space [5]. emails. The solution is tested through an empirical study.
Results showed that this email client helps blind people to send
Saurabh Sawant et.al in paper [6] proposes a system for and receive emails with comfort and ease. [8]
visually impaired and illiterate people for improving their
interaction with the email system. This system eliminates use Advantages of the above surveyed
of IVR Technology that used Screen Readers and Braille
Keyboard. There, have used Speech to text and Text to speech techniques
conversion. Also for other operations voice commands. For In most of the papers, it can be seen that the whole process of
registration, used email id and password. For the functionality, speech-to-text and text-to speech makes it more interactive and
use a feature of PHP that is PHP mailer. It is a library which easy for the visually impaired people. This system makes the
can be used to send email. In order to fetch the user's mail from disabled people feel like normal users. Also, voice based is
the IMAP server. Here, Knuth-Morris-Pratt Algorithm is used useful for handicapped and illiterate people. Automatic-speech
for searching mail in inboxes. To conclude, the system recognizer is of the major advantages. We can see a reduction
environment is purely voice based driven with proper feedback in cognitive load taken by blind to remember and type
from the system at every stage. The drawback of this system is characters using a keyboard. Voice based email system is a
that it uses Gmail as a host server so we cannot use other email user-friendly system.
services like Yahoo etc. [6].
Disadvantages/Limitations of the above
Payal Dudhbale et.al. [6] Proposed Voice Based System in surveyed techniques
Desktop and Mobile Devices for Blind People. The major In almost all the papers, it can be seen that there is use of
components of the proposed system in this paper [7] are mouse clicks for many tasks. It gets difficult for visually
mentioned below. impaired people.
1. G-mail System reads messages on recipient mailbox. Also, the Indian subcontinent is not benefited by this as there
2. RSS-Real simple syndication for news are so many languages and speech recognizers cannot
recognize these languages. Mostly English language is
3. Song-listen songs preferred.
4. Book reader-system red book The following section is the proposed system for the visually
5. Drive browser-To search drives and folders. impaired.

The architecture is used by blind people to access Email and 3. PROPOSED SYSTEM
multimedia functions of the Operating system easily. The GUI In the proposed system, a desktop application is to be
design can be accessed using voice commands and mouse developed that can be used by people with various visual
clicks eliminating the use of a keyboard. Along with Email, imparities, to access emails easily and efficiently. All the
also developed RSS that's Really Simple Syndication which is existing voice based email systems, provide their own user
a way to distribute a list of headlines, update notices. Also developed email services and do not incorporate the use of
developed a mobile application for the same. Along with E- Google’s Gmail. So, considering this here, the intention is to
mail other applications can also be accessed through voice develop the application by linking it with the Gmail Client,
commands [7]. thereby giving users an additional advantage.
In [8] paper, the authors have proposed Tetra Mail, a usable Module Description
blind-friendly email client to overcome the challenges
pertaining to the accessibility and usability of email-related
1. Speech- to-Text Converter
activities on a smartphone. Speech-to-text converter recognizes the speech, analyzes the
sounds you make by filtering what you say, then digitizes it to
Proposed System: The proposed email client is evaluated a format it can read. The recognized text can be saved in a file.
through an empirical study of 38 blind participants by .Net and C#.Net platforms are used here to develop this. Our
performing 14 email activities. The proposed solution may help speech to-text system directly obtains and converts speech to
blind people in sending, receiving, organizing, and managing text. Speech recognition systems can be divided into several
emails. The usability of the design has been evaluated using blocks: feature extraction, acoustic models database which is
standardized HCI usability and accessibility parameters. The created based on the training data, dictionary, language model
proposed solution was compared to other email clients such as and the speech recognition algorithm.
Gmail and Thunderbird.
2. Text-to-Speech Converter
Framework for Tetra Mail client: Based on the HCI model,
Using speech synthesis techniques, it converts text to voice
they have developed a framework for an email client for blind
output. It is employed by the blind to concentrate to written
people called Tetra Mail. The interface of Tetra Mail is
material; it’s now used extensively to convey financial data, e-

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 175– No. 16, September 2020
mail messages, and other information through the telephone for
everybody. Text-to-speech is also used on devices such as
portable GPS units to announce street names when giving
directions.

3. Voice based Email Application

The user can send emails, listen to what they have written and
also receive emails and listen to them with voice commands. In
Email, the application makes use of the SMTP protocol for
sending emails and POP3 protocol for receiving emails. SMTP
(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the reliable protocol to send
emails and it works in a simple way that the SMTP server
passes on the email messages quickly. POP3 (Post Office
Protocol) is used to receive emails. The POP3 server stores the
email and on request the emails are displayed. The same is
implemented in our application, that on the request by the user
the emails are downloaded.

Figure 2: Flowchart of the Proposed System

Fig. 2 explains the flow of the application:
 The user has to register themselves by creating their
account.
Figure 1: Overview of Proposed System
 It will prompt for Email id and Password, following
Fig. 1 represents the overview of the proposed system. Its which, the authentication will take place.
requirements are detailed as follows:
 For correct credentials entered the user’s registration
Hardware Requirements process will be successfully completed.
 1 GB RAM.  The user can log into their mail systems, Check
 200 GB HDD.  Mails and compose them.
 Intel 1.66 GHz Processor Pentium4  Here, the Speech-to-text & Text-to-speech modules
Software Requirements  Come handy.
 Windows10
 System reads out mails, the sender’s name, the
 Visual Studio2013 subject and the main body.
 Windows Operating System  Similarly, users can compose emails with the help of
the Speech Recognition module or directly send
 ASP.net audio attachments with the recorder provided by the
It is a web development platform that provides the services application.
necessary for developers to build enterprise-class web The next section discusses the implementation details.
applications.
 Microsoft SQL Server
4. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
This section presents the details of implementation based on
A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to store the proposed system.
the new user registration and other details in the database.
In reference to fig. 3, the new user registration page is used for
Flowchart of the Proposed System storing email in the database. (List every entry needed for

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 International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)
Volume 175– No. 16, September 2020
registration) The credentials required for the registration
process are the Email ID and Password.

Figure 3: New User Registration Page Figure 6: Compose Mail Page

In reference to fig. 5, reading of messages is done perfectly
with 100% accuracy. This is done with the help of a Text-to-
speech converter.
In reference to fig. 6 for composing of Emails, we have given a
recorder to record messages. The accuracy of speech-to-text is
low as there is a need to train it. With the help of the recorder,
users can directly attach the audio files.
Thus, we have created a desktop application that makes
checking mails and composing mails easier for the visually
impaired with the help of Speech-to-text and Text-to-speech
converters.
We overcame the limitation of creating a user based mailing
system by building the application using Gmail’s SMTP and
POP3 clients.
Figure 4: Login Page
This will not only ensure user’s data security but also give
In reference to fig. 4, users have to enter login credentials. users a sense of secure mailing.

5. CONCLUSIONS
This paper is the proposed Voice based Email system for
visually impaired people, which is developed as an application
which helps the blind and handicapped people to access mails
easily and efficiently. It provides a voice based mailing service
where the visually impaired person could read and send mail
by their own without the help of others. It requires basic
information about keyboard shortcuts. System has eliminated
all these concepts and overcome all difficulties faced by the
visually impaired. It uses a speech recognition application
which provides an efficient voice input method for mailing
devices for blind. It is also useful for handicapped and illiterate
people.

In future, we attempt to make the system keyboard free and

fully voice based. So it's easy for the visually impaired people
to access the services. The system developed now is working
only on desktops. As use of mobile phones is emerging as a
trend today, there is a scope to incorporate this facility as an
application in mobile phones also. Also, security measures to
be implemented during the login phase can be revised to form
Figure 5: Inbox Page the system safer.

6. REFERENCES
[1] Sharma, J. and Sharma, J., 2016. Voice Based Mail
System. [online] Scribd. Available at:
<https://www.scribd.com/document/306826969/voice-

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Volume 175– No. 16, September 2020

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