VirtualAurea: perception through spatialized sound

Blind children cognition is currently enhanced by using tactile-based methods such as the Braille system. The use of sound for cognitive purposes is not common in the blind educational community. Even though these facts, an increasingly number of studies are showing that blind children can develop cognitive structures through the interaction with spatial sound. Most studies use specific purpose software to help blind children to construct cognition and learning. A common characteristic of these studies is the absence of robust usability studies that inform of the adequacy and user satisfaction with this sound-based software. This paper introduces VirtualAurea, a flexible software editor for sound-based virtual environments designed “with” and “for” blind children to construct their cognition. It also presents a complete usability study to validate the editor with blind learners by using a kit of cognitive tasks. We also determined the impact of the interaction with this software editor on the development of basic cognitive functions, operations, auditory perception, laterality, comprehensive language, and tempospatial orientation mental skills of blind learners.