Dr. Coughlan's Bar Code Reader, BLaDE, Featured in Scientific American

Smartphone app, BLaDE, detecting a bar code

Work by Drs. James Coughlan and Ender Tekin on bar code readers as an accessibility tool is discussed in Scientific American. The work with using these tools is specifically focused for people who are blind or who have visual impairments.

BLaDE (Barcode Localization and Decoding Engine) is an Android smartphone app designed to enable a blind or visually impaired user find and read product barcodes. The primary innovation of BLaDE, relative to most commercially available smartphone apps for reading barcodes, is that it provides real-time audio feedback to help visually impaired users find a barcode, which is a prerequisite to being able to read it.

This work was supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute and by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

To learn more about BLaDE, visit:

Scientific American