Growing plants is a typical experiment required by different biology classes. It is difficult for blind students to grow plants by themselves. To increase the accessibility of biology experiments, we have developed a digital plant-growing system. This system is controlled by an Arduino micro-controller, equipped with a camera and humidity, temperature and soil moisture sensors. The environmental parameters are sampled every second. The camera takes a picture of the plant every 30 minutes. The growth of the plant is analyzed using computer vision techniques. This system is used to monitor the growth of basil plants in our University greenhouse. The important visual and non-visual information related to plant growth are transferred into digital format. Blind students could monitor the growth of the plants and make proper decisions of actions, simply sitting at their computers. It dramatically increased the accessibility of the biology experiment.
Inclusion in Science Learning a New Direction, conference on disability and STEM