Virtual Localization by Blind Persons

Localization performance and spatial hearing abilities of blind persons are complex issues. In everyday life we rely on the “fact” that blind people can hear better, without thinking of what “better” means. Localization performance depends on many parameters such as properties of the excitation signal, environmental conditions, individual aspects, and visual influence. Our goal was to create a virtual environment aimed at helping the blind community use personal computers. In developing this environment we were concerned to cover technical and hearing related questions, as well as human factors. At first, this project included sighted subjects and basic properties of the virtual audio system and the applied HRTFs were tested. Subsequently, blind persons have been involved and comparative measurements performed using the same equipment and selected localization tasks. Twenty-eight blind person’s localization performances were tested and compared with the results of 40 sighted subjects in a virtual audio environment. Blind subjects tended to be better in detecting movements in the horizontal plane around the head, localizing static frontal audio sources, and orientation in a 2-D virtual audio display. On the other hand, sighted subjects performed better identifying ascending sound sources in the vertical plane and detecting static sources in the back. In-the-head localization error rates and MAA results appeared to be about the same for both groups. The evaluation was also supported by some informal questions.

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