Interactive hierarchy-based auditory displays for accessing and manipulating relational diagrams

An approach to designing hierarchy-based auditory displays that supports non-visual interaction with relational diagrams is presented. The approach is motivated by an analysis of the functional and structural properties of relational diagrams in terms of their role as external representations. This analysis informs the design of a multiple perspective hierarchy-based model that captures modality independent features of a diagram when translating it into an audio accessible form. The paper outlines design lessons learnt from two user studies that were conducted to evaluate the proposed approach.