WebSound: a generic Web sonification tool, and its application to an auditory Web browser for blind and visually impaired users

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.