Evaluation of User Habits for Creating Auditory Representations of Different Software Applications for Blind Persons

Abstract

Blind and visually disabled persons use special software environments – such as Windows-Eyes, JAWS, screen-readers, text-to-speech programs – to access personal computers. These software solutions may offer sound samples for a better orientation. Besides speech, there are auditory icons, earcons or spearcons as possible extension of visual information. Finding the optimal mapping between (visual) events on the screen and their auditory representation is a difficult task. In the frame of the GUIB (Graphical User Interface for Blind Persons) project we started a survey for blind persons as well as for users with normal vision to investigate their user habits and needs, in order to find the most important software applications and sub-functions. Questionnaires were filled in and evaluated to determine the most important and popular applications to be extended with sound representations in the future.