Development and Evaluation of Sonified Weather Maps for Blind Users

Abstract

In recent years there have been significant advances in developing websites that are accessible for individuals with disabilities. In particular, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the Web Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/wai) provide clear standards for developing accessible web based content, and have been the foundation for legal guidelines developed in many countries (Meiselwitz et al., 2010). However, a challenging aspect of accessible web design is developing equivalents of data visualisations for blind users, since data visualisations are often used to allow quicker comprehension of large and complex data sets (Fritz and Barner, 1999). In this research we investigate the potential use of sonification for presenting weather data to blindusers. At this juncture we would like to emphasise that that the term “blind users” has different meanings depending on context and country. For instance, in the US, “blind users” refers to anyone with any type of visual loss, whereas in the UK, “visually impaired” is often used to describe people with low vision, and “blind” is used to describe someone with no useful residual vision.