“ Auditory multimodal navigation for 2 D graphic interfaces : Acoustic Web Navigator

Acoustic Web Navigator (AWN) is a prototype of an application for web browsing where structural, graphical, and text elements of web pages appear as a sound map under user’s mouse pointer or tab/arrow keys. It could serve as accessibility tool, as an interface for devices with limited visualization capabilities, for telerobotics, for sonic iconography, for development of other auditory-object interfaces and managers. AWN differs from existing browsers for the blind like WebbIE, WeMedia browser, Homer and other webpage readers, which mainly have verbal interfaces speaking only text to the user. This paper formulates the main directions of the research and proposes an AWN model to be developed as research evaluation. Requirements for the research and evaluation model are combined with various approaches to the problems of: web browser adaptations, accessibility, multimodal interfaces, image recognition, sound objects, sound browsing, immersive sonic environments, aural representation of spatial objects and their recognition. This paper describes a sketch-model of an acoustic navigator demonstrated at KKH spring exhibition.