Audio game with surround sounds: a preliminary experience with blind and sighted persons
Keywords:
Acoustic stimulation, auditory spatial processing, blindness, computer games, user-computer interfaceAbstract
Audio games are electronic games that use auditory cues instead of the typical visual interfaces
of video games. Evidence indicates that blind people can improve their orientation and mobil-
ity skills due to training with these games. In spite of this, access to such technology is limited
because there are few systems with these features in the market of computer games. In this
work, we intended to advance in computer game design for blind and low vision people. A
series of modifications to an existing audio game (AudioDoom) were conducted to provide to
adult users a realistic and entertaining virtual platform to play and train orientation skills. We
sought to increase the immersive and interactive properties of the game by adding surround sounds and changing the story and the game controller. We evaluated the new design through the performance of blind and sighted participants in different sound environments. The results showed that participants were able to structure the virtual spaces provided by the game. All of them achieved a low level of errors. The sound environments were adequate to generate realistic virtual spaces. Moreover, blind participants showed better performance than sighted ones in time duration tests. This supports the hypothesis about the development of non-visual skills generated by the increased use of other senses.
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