Speak Up!

A small sample of the combination between Text to Speech and Speech To Text
GUI for Normal People and how they can interact with the app
Code about how visually impaired people can interact and order their food.

I was inspired by one of my friends who volunteers at kids' ability and helps kids who cannot help themselves. He told me how difficult it is for visually impaired people to order food in these pandemic times and how they don't support anyone. There is still lots of facilities in first world countries. However, people in third world countries like Africa and India don't have access to this advanced facility at a large scale. So, I got inspired and decided to create something that will make their life a bit easier in these difficult times.

My code is built for both visually impaired and normal people who would like to buy food. My program starts by asking the user if they would like to use "voice recognition or not." If they say no, the program keeps communicating with the user with the help of the speaker and the microphone. The user is asked what would items from the following list they would like to order/buy. If the user says no to the voice recognition software, a GUI becomes visible for the user to choose and buy whatever item they want.

I built my project it PyCharm. I used the pyaudio and pyttsx3 for text speech and speech to text. Then I used both of these technologies simultaneously with GUI to create an interactive platform for visually impaired people. I used the Tkinter to code the GUI and make it usable and appealing for healthy people. Thereafter I used if statements and function to make the program neat and run flawlessly.

This was my first hackathon, and I had lots of challenges but also had lots of fun. I started building my java project because I only knew java and swift, and I was quite familiar with it. However, trying to code a voice to text or text to voice program was very difficult because there were no sources or helpful resources. So, I decided to code in python. I have only used this language once in 2017 and never had to use it thereafter. I did not know any syntax, but I programmed a whole program due to my strong foundation and with quite a bit of research. The mentors were very helpful and helped me whenever I needed them.

I am very proud of creating software for visually impaired people, and not a lot of people can say that. I am also very proud of finishing a programming language that I had no idea how to use 2 days ago.

I learned python 3 and its GUI with advanced technology like Speech to Text and Text to Speech. I also learned how essential fundamentals are and how if your concepts are clear, they will definitely help you in the future.

In the next hackathon, I am trying to improve my programming skills by developing an app or something more extensive that will be fun, innovative and helpful for everyone!