Foreground Sound

In sonification-based web accessibility interfaces, a non-speech audio cue that represents individual content elements within a web page, such as links, images, or text blocks. Foreground sounds are designed to be short, distinct, and attention-grabbing, contrasting with the continuous background melodies that represent page layout structure. Different element types are assigned different sound characteristics — for example, a gunshot sound for links, bagpipe tones for text, and duration-varied sounds for images proportional to their screen area. Foreground sounds play in one audio channel while background sounds play in the other.