The rising pitch metaphor: an empirical study

This paper describes a set of experiments that investigated the use of rising pitch notes to communicate graphical information to visually impaired users. The information communicated in the experiments included coordinate locations within a 40×40 graphical grid, the navigation of an auditory cursor within the graphical grid, the communication of simple graphical shapes and their size. The five simple shapes communicated were rectangles, squares, circles, horizontal and vertical lines. Stereophony, timbre, rhythms, and short tunes were used in addition to the rising pitch metaphor to aid disambiguation. Results suggested that the rising pitch approach enabled visually impaired users to understand the graphical information communicated in the absence of any visual aid. The paper concludes with a discussion of the use of rising pitch metaphor to communicate graphical information.