The Design Space of the Auditory Representation of Objects and Their Behaviours in Virtual Reality for Blind People

Abstract

As virtual reality (VR) is typically designed in terms of visual experience, it poses major challenges for blind people to understand and interact with the environment. To address this, we propose a design space to explore how to augment objects and their behaviours in VR with a nonvisual audio representation. It intends to support designers in creating accessible experiences by explicitly considering alternative representations to visual feedback. To demonstrate its potential, we recruited 16 blind users and explored the design space under two scenarios in the context of boxing: understanding the location of objects (the opponent's defensive stance) and their movement (opponent's punches). We found that the design space enables the exploration of multiple engaging approaches for the auditory representation of virtual objects. Our findings depicted shared preferences but no one-size-fits-all solution, suggesting the need to understand the consequences of each design choice and their impact on the individual user experience.