An experimental sound-based hierarchical menu navigation system for visually handicapped use of graphical user interfaces

The use of modern computers by the visually handicapped has become more difficult over the past few years. In earlier systems the user interface was a simple character based environment. In those systems, simple devices like screen readers, braille output and speech synthesizers were effective. Current systems now run Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) which have rendered these simple aids almost useless. In the current work we are developing a tonally based mechanism that allows the visually handicapped user to navigate through the same complex hierarchical menu structures used in the GUI. The software can be easily, and cheaply, incorporated in modern user interfaces, making them available for use by the visually handicapped. In the remainder of this paper we present a description of the sound-based interfaces as well as the techniques we have developed to test them.