Presentation technique of 2-D diagram utilizing touch-sensitive visual display and loudspeaker matrix: Aurally presentation of the corresponding line direction to contact position

A few devices have been developed for the visually impaired to present figures using their tactile senses. They cannot display differences in various contrast/brightness because the common function of these devices is presentation of dots with pin-up or pin-down. In this paper, we examined preliminary experiment whether subjects could perceive whole figure by the system utilizing pen-tablet and loudspeaker-matrix, with using only one kind of sound (white noise). When the subject traced on the pen-tablet, the loudspeaker-matrix presented sound to indicate the line direction of figure corresponding to contact point. All subjects could trace outline of the figure composed of straight lines by the system.