Situation: The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that worldwide, 285 million people are visually impaired due to various causes; 39 million of them are blind, a majority of them living in developing countries (WHO June 2012). This project stems from reflection into their lives. Literature forms one of the integral medium of acquiring knowledge and information for the blind. Currently, the system widely employed by blind people across the globe to read and write is the Braille standard. The difference in characteristics of this standard from the normal English language results in the need for literature to be reproduced in Braille; which is both time and resource-consuming. Hence, the number and diversity of Braille-translated books available is very limited; in-turn, limiting accessibility to information. Furthermore, the current braille literacy levels amongst the blind and visually impaired are very low, around 10% in USA (NFB 2009) and even lower in developing countries. Even today, despite the fast advance in technology, very few products in this category of reading aids exist in the market, which are especially designed and developed for the blind. Additionally, most of these products are either bulky, not portable, uncomfortable, expensive, partially useful or not designed/suitable for use by a blind person i.e. not user friendly. The high prices of such devices further render them unaffordable to a large section of the blind in developing nations, where the majority of blind reside; thus, catering only to a very small market of developed regions like US, Europe, etc. The project: The aim of this project is to enhance the daily life of the blind by developing a portable, affordable product utilising modern technology, which enables them to access everyday documents and books currently unavailable or difficult to obtain in Braille. Another aspect is to make the most of the expertise of the supervisory team in areas of electronics, image processing and user research, to develop a practical and functional test model. The project involved extensive rounds of interviews, modelling and testing with participants (user-centred and participatory design approach) along with a sound technical analysis. A typical reading device involves thee steps: image capture, processing (image correction algorithms and optical character recognition) and user interaction (buttons, text-to-speech audio output). Scanner is found to be a better image capture module in comparison to small camera found in smartphones, giving a clearer, sharper image and also easy to use. The proposed design comprises of two overlapping scanner heads. The scanned images from each of the scanners are matched, stitched together and then processed into an audio output using open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) algorithms. The various features and overall integrated design make the device portable (handheld), affordable (< 180 euros) and easy to use.