Andr Assimacopoulos’s scientific contributions

The inherent visual nature of Internet browsers makes the Web inaccessible to the visually impaired. Although several nonvisual browsers have been developed, they usually transform the visual content of HTML documents into textual information only, that can be rendered by a text-to-speech converter or a Braille device. The loss of spatial layout and of textual attributes should be avoided since they often bear visually important information. Moreover, typical non-visual Internet browsers do not allow visually impaired and sighted individuals to easily work together using the same environment. This paper presents WebSound, a new generic Web sonification tool and its application to a 3D audio augmented Internet browser (Internet Explorer 5.0) developed by the Computer Vision Group at the University of Geneva.

In the Internet world, the widespread use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) increasingly bars visually handicapped people from accessing digital information. In this context our project aims at providing sight handicapped people with alternative access modalities to various types of GUIs and graphic intensive programs, in order for instance to facilitate usage of Web services. We describe in this paper ABWeb [1], a 3D-audio Web browser that allows blind computer users to explore Web pages, fill in forms, etc., using a 3D sonic rendering. We also present WebSound [2], a generic tool that permits to associate with each HTML tag a given sonic object (earcon or auditory icon). Finally, we describe a series of associated programs composed of the family of sonic games From Dots to Shapes [3], as well as of IDEA, a tool that lets users comprehend simple drawings, as well as to create graphics. Keywords: WWW, blind users, 3D virtual sound space, multimodal interface, sound and image proces...

This paper presents our work on the development of a multimodal auditory interface which permits blind users to work more easily and efficiently with GUI browsers. A macro-analysis phase, which can be either passive or active, informs on the global layout of HTML documents. A subsequent active micro-analysis phase allows to explore particular elements of the document. The interface is based on : (1) a mapping of the graphical HTML document into a 3D virtual sound space environment, where non-speech auditory cues differentiate HTML elements; (2) the transcription into sound not only of text, but also of images; (3) the use of a touch-sensitive screen to facilitate user interaction. Moreover, in order to validate the sonification model of the images, we have created an audio "memory game", that can be used as a pedagogical tool to help blind pupils learn spatial exploration cues.

The Internet now permits easy access to textual and pictorial material from an exponentially growing number