AUXie: Initial evaluation of a blind-accessible virtual museum tour

Dulyan, A; Edmonds, E

AUXie: Initial evaluation of a blind-accessible virtual museum tour

Dulyan, A Edmonds, E

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Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 2010, pp. 272 - 275
Issue Date:: 2010-12-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Dulyan, A	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Edmonds, E	en_US
dc.date.issued	2010-12-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 2010, pp. 272 - 275	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781450305020	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/16293
dc.description.abstract	Remotely accessible audio-based virtual tours can offer great utility for blind or vision impaired persons, eliminating the difficulties posed by travel to unfamiliar locations, and allowing truly independent exploration. This paper draws upon sonification techniques used in previous implementations of audio-based 3D environments to develop a prototype of blind-accessible virtual tours specifically tailored to the needs of cultural sites. A navigable 3D world is presented using spatially positioned musical earcons, accompanied by synthesised speech descriptions and navigation aids. The worlds are read from X3D models enhanced with metadata to identify and describe the rooms and exhibits, thus enabling an audio modality for existing 3D worlds and simplifying the tour creation process. The prototype, named AUXie, was evaluated by 11 volunteers with total blindness to establish a proof of concept and identify the problematic aspects of the interface. The positive response obtained confirmed the validity of the approach and yielded valuable insight into how such tours can be further improved. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1145/1952222.1952280	en_US
dc.title	AUXie: Initial evaluation of a blind-accessible virtual museum tour	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.for	080602 Computer-Human Interaction	en_US
dc.location.activity	Brisbane, Australia	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Software
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - HCTD - Human Centred Technology Design
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

Remotely accessible audio-based virtual tours can offer great utility for blind or vision impaired persons, eliminating the difficulties posed by travel to unfamiliar locations, and allowing truly independent exploration. This paper draws upon sonification techniques used in previous implementations of audio-based 3D environments to develop a prototype of blind-accessible virtual tours specifically tailored to the needs of cultural sites. A navigable 3D world is presented using spatially positioned musical earcons, accompanied by synthesised speech descriptions and navigation aids. The worlds are read from X3D models enhanced with metadata to identify and describe the rooms and exhibits, thus enabling an audio modality for existing 3D worlds and simplifying the tour creation process. The prototype, named AUXie, was evaluated by 11 volunteers with total blindness to establish a proof of concept and identify the problematic aspects of the interface. The positive response obtained confirmed the validity of the approach and yielded valuable insight into how such tours can be further improved. Copyright the author(s) and CHISIG.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/16293