Hearing a Circle: An Exploratory Study of Accessible Sonification for
Young Children with Blindness and Low Vision
Abstract
This paper describes a qualitative study of educational outcomes for
0–8-year-old children with blindness and low vision (BLV) who are
learning sonification concepts. Children with BLV experience barriers to
accessing education and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics (STEM), fields which traditionally rely heavily on visual
representation of information. There is growing awareness of the
potential of sonification, a technology to represent data and
information in non-speech audio, to improve education access. While
early learning of assistive technology skills is deemed essential for
equity of access to education across the curriculum, children are
generally not introduced to the concept of sonification at school until
at academic level in secondary or tertiary education. Little is known
about how young children with BLV engage with this promising technology.
Phase 1 of the project consisted of the development of ‘CosmoBally on
Sonoplanet’, an accessible, educational game application for iPads and
Android tablets. In phase 2, an online qualitative survey collected
formal responses from users of this app to Likert scale and open-ended
questions. The majority of the 17 respondents were (specialist)
educators, and five of the respondents identified as having BLV. The
survey investigated respondents’ perceptions of the capabilities of
young children with BLV in using basic sonification in ‘CosmoBally on
Sonoplanet’ to identify shapes - including a circle-, orientate in a
digital grid and create drawings on a touch screen. Results suggest that
young children with BLV can learn sonification skills and that they
additionally build relevant non-sonification skills during this learning
process. This paper aims to provide a first insight into best practice
around early learning of sonification as a potential tool for increased
access and inclusion of children with BLV to STEM subjects in school.