Скачать или смотреть iSonic: Interactive Data Sonification for Blind Users

Isonic was developed by Haixia Zhao under the supervision of Catherine Plaisant and Ben Shneiderman at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland. Interactive data visualization tools are helpful to gain insight about data, find patterns and exceptions, but are usually non accessible to users with vision impairments. In the case of geo-referenced data where users need to combine demographic, economic or other data in a geographic context for decision-making, we designed iSonic, an interactive sonification tool that allows users to explore in highly coordinated table and choropleth map views of the data. Sounds of various timbres and pitches are tied to map regions and other interface widgets to create a virtual auditory data display. The integrated use of musical sounds and speech allows users to grasp the overall data trends and to explore for more details. We use the MIDI sound technique to provide high availability, and also use virtual 3-D sound technique, when available, to enhance user experiences.
Users use a standard computer keyboard, or a smooth surface touchpad when available, to interact with data. Examples of already implemented interactions include: (1) Automatically sweep to scan the map or the table to hear the data patterns; (2) Recursively partition the map into 3 by 3 ranges and use the keyboard number pad to explore each range, or use arrow keys to move among individual regions; (3) Glide a finger or press individual spots on a smooth surface touchpad to examine individual regions; The touchpad can be remapped to a partial map through zooming; (4) Dynamically adjust the auditory feedback information detail level. Our goal is to explore the design space by conducting user studies to identify effective sonification of choropleth maps and geo-referenced data, and examine the effectiveness of our tool in helping vision-impaired users. We also want to investigate the sonification of maps as a complement to visual maps for sighted users (e.g. to make "visible" the District of Columbia). http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/audiomap/