The recent development of color coding in tactile pictograms helps people with visual impairments (PVI) appreciate the visual arts. The auditory sense, in conjunction with (or possibly as an alternative to) the tactile sense, would allow PVI to perceive colors in a way that would be difficult to achieve with just a tactile stimulus. Sound coding colors (SCCs) can replicate three characteristics of colors, i.e., hue, chroma, and value, by matching them with three characteristics of sound, i.e., timbre, intensity, and pitch. This paper examines relationships between sound (melody) and color mediated by tactile pattern color coding and provides sound coding for hue, chroma, and value to help PVI deepen their relationship with visual art. Our two proposed SCC sets use melody to improve upon most SCC sets currently in use by adding more colors (18 colors in 6 hues). User experience and identification tests were conducted with 12 visually impaired and 8 sighted adults, and the results suggest that the SCC sets were helpful for the participants.
Tactile pattern recognition by graphic display: Importance of 3-D information for haptic perception of familiar objects
