EchoDeck

Hear the game, play with confidence. AI-powered card recognition for blind and visually impaired players.

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🎴 EchoDeck: Making Card Games Accessible to All

🌟 Inspiration

In a world filled with social experiences, card games stand out as timeless bridges connecting people across generations and backgrounds. Yet, for the visually impaired community, these simple joys often remain inaccessible barriers rather than gateways to connection.

🃏 Card games aren’t just about the cards—they’re about laughter, strategy, and meaningful connections.

Our team was struck by this fundamental inequity. While digital entertainment has seen tremendous advances in accessibility, physical card games—with their tactile nature and social dynamics—have largely remained unchanged for those who cannot see the cards.

🔥 Our Mission

We envisioned a world where everyone can play, where visual impairment doesn’t determine who gets included in game night. Board and card games are one of the most authentic ways people socialise face-to-face, and we believe those moments should be available to everyone, regardless of ability.

📢 This project isn’t just about making cards readable for the blind—it’s about ensuring that no one feels left out when friends gather around a table.

📸 What It Does

EchoDeck is a web app designed for accessibility, working on any device with a camera, though optimised for mobile use.

🃏 How it works:
1️⃣ Point your camera at your hand or deck of cards while playing.
2️⃣ The app provides an AI-generated identification of the cards you’re holding.
3️⃣ Designed for screen readers: Based on our market research, visually impaired users prefer using their own screen readers to interpret text rather than having the app read it aloud.

🎯 Game-Specific Detection:

  • The main page includes a list of over 100 games with pre-tailored attributes to improve detection accuracy.
  • If your game isn’t listed, there’s also a general detection mode that can still recognize and describe the cards.

🛠️ How We Built It

🚀 Tech Stack:

  • Next.js for the frontend
  • Convex for the backend data storage
  • GPT-4o API for fast and accurate AI-generated descriptions
  • Tailwind CSS for a clean and responsive UI

💾 Each pre-filtered prompt is stored in the database, allowing users to select them without extra processing time.

⚡ Challenges We Ran Into

1️⃣ Learning Frontend on the Fly 💻

  • 3 out of 5 team members had little to no frontend experience.
  • We learned on the spot, reading docs, troubleshooting, and supporting each other.

2️⃣ API Limitations & Optimisation 🔄

  • API limits when processing images required us to optimise requests.
  • Solution: Using the Convex backend to convert images into URLs, reducing file transfer size.

3️⃣ Managing Merge Conflicts & GitHub Workflow 🔄

  • Handling GitHub merge conflicts and learning best collaboration practices.
  • By the end, everyone became comfortable with version control.

4️⃣ Deployment Hurdles 🚀

  • The app worked in dev mode but had issues when deployed.
  • API size limits when handling images required us to refine backend processing for efficiency.

🏆 Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

✅ Everyone on the team learned GitHub effectively.
✅ We built a fully functional, deployed product—not just a local dev project.
✅ We created a solution that genuinely improves accessibility for visually impaired players.

🎉 This isn't just a side project—it’s a tool that makes a real difference!

📚 What We Learned

📌 The importance of designing for accessibility beyond standard UI/UX.
📌 How to adapt and learn new technologies under pressure.
📌 Optimising API calls and backend processes for better performance.
📌 Collaboration, problem-solving, and the power of persistence.

🔮 What's Next for EchoDeck

🚀 EchoDeck is just the beginning! Next, we plan to:
✅ Expand support for more card games with clearer & more concise AI-generated responses.
✅ Develop our own machine learning models for better card recognition & lower latency.
✅ Introduce Braille display compatibility for broader accessibility.
✅ Build a native mobile app for an even smoother experience.

🎯 Our ultimate goal: Make every card game fully accessible because everyone deserves to play!

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