Sound Indicators for Accessible Sounds in Virtual Reality

Location

Magic Spell Studios - MSS-3110

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Side-by-side photos of RIT students and activities with the text See How RIT is Advancing the Exceptional underneath.

We created a set of sound indicators to visualize sound characteristics (loudness, duration, and location) and sound types for spatial sound sources in the VR experience. This aims to make the information conveyed by sounds more accessible in VR. In our demo, you are expected to experience using our sound indicators to search for specific sound sources in a kid room scene.

The VR scene of our demo with a kid's room setup.

An overview of the demo’s scene. A player stands at the location marked by the blue arrow.

An object in the room is sounding. The visualization indicator shows a dog icon on the Full Mini-Map and a bark descriptive text on the sounding object.

Our sound indicators use icons on the Mini-Map and text hovering above the object to describe the sound type.

Instruction with the text "Task: Find the object making the baby talking sound" shows on the top section of the screen. A plush toy in the room is sounding. A white ray emitted from the player's VR controller points at the sounding toy. A visualization indicator with a baby icon is hovering over the toy. Visualization indicators with text indicating "Baby Talk", "Phone Ring", and "Bird singing" are shown on the Full Mini-Map.

The Sound-Type Indicator with text on the Mini-Map and an icon on the object. Here, in the player’s view, the plushie rabbit makes a “talking sound”, and its corresponding text and icon are shown.

Location

Magic Spell Studios - MSS-3110

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Topics

Access Technology
Computing
Deaf Community
Engineering
Innovation
Interdisciplinary Studies
Science
STEM

Exhibitor
Ziming Li

Advisor(s)
Roshan Peiris

Organization
n/a

Exhibit Website

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