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• Scanning for Digital Content: How Blind and Sighted People Perceive Concurrent Speech

  João Guerreiro, Daniel Gonçalves · 2016 · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS)

  This paper investigates whether blind and sighted people can leverage concurrent speech — multiple audio streams playing simultaneously — to more efficiently scan and identify relevant digital content, exploiting the well-known Cocktail Party Effect. Screen readers currently…

  visual impairment · concurrent speech · auditory interface · screen reader · cocktail party effect

• Towards Large Scale Evaluation of Novel Sonification Techniques for Non Visual Shape Exploration

  Andrea Gerino, Lorenzo Picinali, Cristian Bernareggi, Nicolò Alabastro, Sergio Mascetti · 2015 · ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This paper presents six sonification techniques for exploring shapes on touchscreen devices and evaluates them through Invisible Puzzle, an iPhone application enabling large-scale unsupervised testing. The research addresses a critical need: people who are blind need access to…

  sonification · blindness · visual impairment · touchscreen · image exploration

• Text-to-Speeches: Evaluating the Perception of Concurrent Speech by Blind People

  João Guerreiro, Daniel Gonçalves · 2014 · ASSETS '14: Proceedings of the 16th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This paper investigates whether blind people can leverage the Cocktail Party Effect—the human ability to focus on one speech source among several while still detecting relevant content in the background—to more efficiently scan digital information. Screen readers present content…

  visual impairment · blindness · screen readers · speech perception · cocktail party effect

• Using simultaneous audio sources to speed-up blind people's web scanning

  João Guerreiro · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper proposes using multiple simultaneous audio sources to help blind users scan web content faster. The core problem is that screen readers present information sequentially — one item at a time — while sighted users can visually scan an entire page at…

  blindness · screen readers · spatial audio · web navigation · auditory perception

• Non-Visual-Cueing-Based Sensing and Understanding of Nearby Entities in Aided Navigation

  Juan Diego Gomez, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun · 2012 · Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2012)

  This demonstration paper presents a context-aware navigation aid system for blind individuals that combines three levels of assistance to enhance understanding of the surrounding environment. The system addresses a fundamental challenge: blind people navigating unfamiliar…

  visual impairment · blind navigation · context-aware computing · computer vision · spatial audio

• Toward 3D Scene Understanding via Audio-description: Kinect-iPad Fusion for the Visually Impaired

  Juan Diego Gomez, Sinan Mohammed, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun · 2011 · Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2011)

  This demonstration paper presents a computer-vision-based framework that combines a Microsoft Kinect 3D depth sensor with an iPad touchscreen to enable visually impaired users to understand the spatial layout of indoor scenes through audio. The system works in several stages:…

  sonification · visual substitution · Kinect · computer vision · blindness

• Color-Audio Encoding Interface for Visual Substitution: See ColOr Matlab-based Demo

  Juan Diego Gomez, Guido Bologna, Thierry Pun · 2010 · Proceedings of the 12th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2010)

  This demonstration paper presents the See ColOr (Seeing Color with an Orchestra) system, a framework that translates colour information from images into spatialized musical instrument sounds to provide people who are blind with a form of colour perception through hearing. The…

  sonification · visual substitution · blindness · color perception · sensory substitution

• Designing Auditory Displays to Facilitate Object Localization in Virtual Haptic 3D Environments

  Koen Crommentuijn, Fredrik Winberg · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper investigates five different auditory display designs to help blind users locate objects in a virtual haptic 3D environment explored with a PHANToM Desktop haptic device. While haptic devices give visually impaired users the ability to explore virtual 3D spaces by…

  auditory display · sonification · haptic feedback · virtual environment · blindness

• Linux Screen Reader: Extensible Assistive Technology

  Peter Parente, Brett Clippingdale · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This paper presents the Linux Screen Reader (LSR), an open source project from IBM that aimed to create a reusable, extensible development platform for building alternative and supplemental user interfaces on the GNOME desktop environment. Unlike conventional screen readers that…

  screen reader · Linux · open source · assistive technology · accessibility API

• iSonic: Interactive Sonification for Non-visual Data Exploration

  Haixia Zhao, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman · 2005 · Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper presents iSonic, an interactive sonification tool developed at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab that enables vision-impaired users to explore geo-referenced statistical data such as population distribution, crime rates, or election results by…

  sonification · data visualization · visual impairment · auditory display · non-visual interaction

• 3D Sound Interactive Environments for Problem Solving

  Jaime Sánchez, Mauricio Sáenz · 2005 · Proceedings of the 7th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '05)

  This paper from the University of Chile presents AudioChile, a 3D sound virtual environment designed to help children with visual disabilities develop problem-solving skills through interactive exploration of Chilean geography and culture. AudioChile is a role-playing game…

  spatial audio · visual impairment · blindness · audio game · cognitive development

• The Audio Abacus: Representing Numerical Values with Nonspeech Sound for the Visually Impaired

  Bruce N. Walker, Jeffrey Lindsay, Justin Godfrey · 2003 · Proceedings of the 6th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '04)

  This paper introduces the Audio Abacus, a novel sonification application that transforms exact numerical values into sequences of non-speech tones, following the analogy of a physical abacus where each digit is represented by a distinct sound. Unlike most sonification research,…

  sonification · auditory display · blindness and low vision · data visualization · non-visual interaction

• Design and Implementation of Virtual Environments for Training of the Visually Impaired

  D. Tzovaras, G. Nikolakis, G. Fergadis, S. Malasiotis, M. Stavrakis · 2002 · Proceedings of the Fifth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '02)

  This paper from the Informatics and Telematics Institute in Greece presents the ENORASI project, an EU-funded initiative to develop a haptic virtual reality training system for blind and visually impaired people. The system uses a CyberGrasp haptic glove — an exoskeletal device…

  haptic technology · virtual reality · blindness and low vision · training · orientation and mobility

• Constructing Sonified Haptic Line Graphs for the Blind Student: First Steps

  Rameshsharma Ramloll, Wai Yu, Stephen Brewster, Beate Riedel, Mike Burton, Gisela Dimigen · 2000 · Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '00)

  This paper presents early research from the University of Glasgow's MultiVis project, a three-year initiative investigating how different sensory modalities can make statistical information representations accessible to blind people. The focus is on making line graphs — a…

  data visualization · sonification · haptic technology · blindness and low vision · tactile graphics

• Wearable Interfaces for Orientation and Wayfinding

  David A. Ross, Bruce B. Blasch · 2000 · Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '00)

  This paper from the Atlanta VA Rehabilitation R&D Center presents the development and evaluation of three wearable orientation interfaces designed to help people with severe visual impairment maintain spatial orientation while navigating, with street crossing as the critical…

  wayfinding · orientation and mobility · wearable technology · blindness and low vision · haptic feedback

• A Generic Direct-Manipulation 3D-Auditory Environment for Hierarchical Navigation in Non-Visual Interaction

  Anthony Savidis, Constantine Stephanidis, Andreas Korte, Kai Crispien, Klaus Fellbaum · 1996 · Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Assistive Technologies (Assets '96)

  This paper presents a generic, reusable 3D-auditory environment designed to support hierarchical navigation in non-visual user interfaces. The authors address a significant gap in assistive technology development: while 3D audio had been used in a few specialized systems for…

  non-visual interaction · auditory interface · 3D audio · spatial audio · gesture recognition