Using Non-speech Sounds to Improve Access to 2D Tabular Numerical Information for Visually Impaired Users

We investigated two solutions for numerical (2D) tabular data discovery and overview for visually impaired and blind users. One involved accessing information in tables (26 rows x 10 columns containing integers between and including 0 and 100) by this target user group using both speech and non-speech sounds. The other involved accessing similar information in tables of the same size through speech only by the same user group. We found that opportunities to access data through non-speech sounds result in a highly significant decrease in the overall subjective workload, more specifically in the mental, temporal, performance and frustration workload categories. This subjective workload assessment was supported by our quantitative results which showed a highly significant decrease in the average time taken tocomplete a given datacomprehension task and a significant increase in the number of successfullycompleted tasks.