Auditory Display of Coarse Optical Imagery: Concept for a Rehabilitation Aid for Blind Spatial Orientation

Abstract

We introduce a concept for a rehabilitation aid for blind persons that will present, on a sonic display, coarse optical information obtained from a spectacle-mounted camera. The aid will serve blind persons who have no light sense or who can at most detect ambient light. The approach is to map luminous intensity to loudness of continuous tones of distinct timbre representing a small number of directions relative to that of the user’s head.