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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.
Introduction
Other applications
Media content viewers Windows Media Player
(3,7). The most popular player is Winamp (4) for
audio, and the BSPlayer for video. Messenger
services Windows/MSN Messenger is the winning
application (3,7) , Skype (2,6). On the other
hand, ICQ (1,6) and chatting (2) are out of
interests. Download managers and accelerators
(e.g. getRight) and DC clients are mostly used by
the young, male adults (2,7 points each).
Different torrent clients (3,1) are used most
frequently. Virus/spam killer (4,1), but only
in a very user-friendly way (automatic
installation and maintaining). Other important
applications include CD/DVD burning software
(3,7), image viewer and handling (4) and ZIP/RAR
compressors (3,3). From the built-in services of
Windows XP the following applications are
frequently used Printers (3,8), Control Panel
(3,4), My documents folder (3,2), Paint (3,1),
Search for files or folders (3). The command
prompt (2,8), the calculator (2,7) and the Help
(2,1) is only seldom accessed NEED FOR GAMING
AND ENTERTAINMENT!

• GUIB project virtual audio display for visually
  disabled
• 30-40 most important applications, functions
• Linking, creating earcons, auditory icons,
  spearcons
• Testing and implementation (JAWS)

Subjects

• Blind persons and visually not impaired for
  comparison
• Two different questionnaires (to download),
  JAWS-friendly
• Budapest/Hungary and Leipzig/Germany
• 10 females, 50 male (all with normal vision)
• Everyday users
• Ranking by giving points from 1 to 5

Results (average)

• Internet access
• 1. Arrows back and forward (4,2 points)
• 2. Open/close new browser tab (3,9)
• 3. Typing URL address (3,85)
• 4. Open/close new browser window (3,8)
• 5. Save/open picture or link (3,6)
• 6. Home button (3,5)
• 7. Favorites, bookmarks (3,37)
• 8. Re-read/refresh actual site (3,35)
• 9. Print (3,32)
• 10. Find on this screen (3,2)
• 11. Stop downloading actual site (2,8)
• E-mail client
• 1. Delete mail (4,2)
• 2. Download new mails from server (4,19)
• 3. Compose new mail (4,18)
• 4. Send composed mail (4,18)
• 5. Reply (4,15)

Hungarian spearcons
Introduction to blind users (in
Hungarian) Original recording of a male
speaker Compressed with MATLAB Spectral
evaluation 16 bits resolution and at least 22050
Hz of sampling frequency is required. Using 44100
Hz is recommended to avoid noisy spearcons. A
text-to-speech application (SpeakBoard) was also
used to save wave files, but listeners preferred
original recordings of a human speaker. Longer
sentences (more than 3-4 words) become
unintelligible after compression, so this method
is not suited for creating spearcons longer than
1-2 words. It is always recommended to truncate
the samples before compression to remove
unnecessary silence at start. Sonification (?)
for shrinking and growing windows?
Figure 1 (left). Spectral representation of the
word print (in Hungarian). Original recording
(top) and compressed spearcon (bottom) in 16
bits, 44100 Hz resolution.
Figure 2 (right). Spectral representation of the
word print (in Hungarian). Compressed spearcon
in 16 bits, 22050 Hz resolution (top) and in 8
bits, 44100 Hz resolution (bottom).
Summary
A detailed survey has been started to investigate
user habits under MS Windows environment. 60
users with normal vision evaluated different
applications and their functions. Meanwhile, an
on-line, easy-access questionnaire is being
filled in by blind users. The goal is to find the
30-40 most important feature that has to be
represented by sound events (auditory icons,
earcons, spearcons) as well. These can be then
implemented under JAWS or maybe used for the GUIB
project and for extended virtual simulation
(spatial distribution with HRTF filtering etc.).
Blind users support the creation of a collection
of sounds and spearcons for a faster and better
accessibility to personal computers. Future works
include synthesis, recording and evaluation of
different sound samples and spearcons.