Math Graphs for the Visually Impaired: Audio Presentation of Elements of Mathematical Graphs

Abstract

The sense of sight takes a dominating role in learning mathematical graphs. Most visually impaired students drop out of mathematics because necessary content is inaccessible. Sonification and auditory graphs have been the primary methods of representing data through sound. However, the representation of mathematical elements of graphs is still unexplored. The experiments in this paper investigate optimal methods for representing mathematical elements of graphs with sound. The results indicate that the methods of design in this study are effective for describing mathematical elements of graphs, such as axes, quadrants and differentiability. These findings can help visually impaired learners to be more independent, and also facilitate further studies on assistive technology.