A sonification proposal for safe travels of blind people

Abstract

Sonification is one of the most natural ways to complete the information perceived by the blinds. Thus, it has been widely applied to create assistive products to help these collective in their daily life. In our case, we are working in a mobility device which transforms the depth map of a scene into a set of sounds, comprehensible by the user. Our sonification proposal is based on the opinions of experts and potential users, recovered by different interviews which crystallize in the herein explained sonification. This proposal follows the so-called point transform, which allows real-time sonification and quite accurate localization of the sound sources. However, some modifications to avoid ambiguous situations are also implemented and explained in this study.