On the Evaluation of Novel Sonification Techniques for Non-Visual Shape Exploration

There are several situations in which a person with visual impairment or blindness needs to extract infor- mation from an image. For example, graphical representations are often used in education, in particular in STEM subjects. In this contribution we propose a set of 6 soni cation techniques to support individuals with visual impairment or blindness in recognizing shapes on touchscreen devices. These techniques are compared among themselves and with 2 other soni cation techniques already proposed in the literature. Using Invisible Puzzle , a mobile application which allows to conduct non-supervised evaluation sessions, we conducted tests with 49 subjects with visual impairment and blindness, and 178 sighted subjects. All sub- jects involved in the process successfully completed the evaluation session, showing high level of engagement, demonstrating therefore the e ectiveness of the evaluation procedure. Results give interesting insights into the di erences among the soni cation techniques and, most importantly, show that after a short training subjects are able to successfully identify several di erent shapes