Beyond a visuocentric way of a visual Web search clustering engine: The sonification of WhatsOnWeb

It is widely accepted that spatial representation is processed by an amodal system. Recent studies show that blind subjects have a better motion ability than sighted people in performing spatial exploration guided only by natural auditory cues. For this reason, the sonification method offers a strong effective tool able to transmit graphic information overcoming the digital divide risen by a visuocentric modality in which contents are conveyed by the Information Visualization Technology. This paper presents a usability evaluation experiment that aims at investigating the interaction differences between both blind and sighted users while surfing a visual Web search clustering engine, called WhatsOnWeb (WoW). The WoW search engine represents an indexed dataset by using graph-drawing methods on semantically clustered data. We compare the visual presentation of three different WoW layouts with the sonificated ones, demonstrating both qualitatively and quantitatively that blind and sighted users perform with no significant differences the web interaction. These results remark that the digital divide could be decreased by going beyond the visuocentric way of the commomnly adopted visual content representation.