International Community for Auditory Display

The See ColOr interface transforms a small portion of a colored video image into sound sources represented by spatialized musical instruments. This interface aims at providing visually impaired people with a capability of perception of the environment. As a first step of this on-going project, the purpose is to verify the hypothesis that it is possible to use sounds from musical instruments to replace color. Compared to state of the art devices, a quality of the See ColOr interface is that it allows the user to receive a feed-back auditory signal from the environment and its colors, promptly. Two experiments based on a head mounted camera have been performed. The first experiment pertaining to object manipulation is based on the pairing of colored socks, while the second experiment is related to outdoor navigation with the goal of following a colored serpentine. The ``socks'' experiment demonstrated that seven blindfolded individuals were able to accurately match pairs of colored socks. The same participants successfully followed a red serpentine for more than 80 meters.