Usability and Effectiveness of Auditory Sensory Substitution Models for the Visually Impaired

Abstract

This paper focuses on auditory sensory substitution for providing visually impaired users with suitable information in both static scene recognition and dynamic obstacle avoidance. We introduce three different sonification models together with three temporal presentation schemes, i.e., ways of temporally organizing the sonic events in order to provide suitable information. Following an overview of the motivation and challenges behind each of the solutions, we describe their implementation and an evaluation of their relative strengths and weaknesses based on a set of experiments in a virtual environment.