The development of assistive technologies is improving the independent access of blind and visually impaired people to visual artworks through non-visual channels. Current single modality tactile and auditory approaches to communicate color contents must compromise between conveying a broad color palette, ease of learning, and suffer from limited expressiveness. In this work, we propose a multi-sensory color code system that uses sound and scent to represent colors. Melodies express each color’s hue and scents the saturated, light, and dark color dimensions for each hue. In collaboration with eighteen participants, we evaluated the color identification rate achieved when using the multi-sensory approach. Seven (39%) of the participants improved their identification rate, five (28%) remained the same, and six (33%) performed worse when compared to an audio-only color code alternative. The participants then evaluated and compared a color content exploration prototype that uses the proposed color code with a tactile graphic equivalent using the System Usability Scale. For a visual artwork color exploration task, the multi-sensory color code integrated prototype received a score of 78.61, while the tactile graphics equivalent received 61.53. User feedback indicates that the multi-sensory color code system improved the convenience and confidence of the participants.

Tactile perception enables people with visual impairments (PVI) to engage with artworks and real-life objects at a deeper abstraction level. The development of tactile and multi-sensory assistive technologies has expanded their opportunities to appreciate visual arts. We have developed a tactile interface based on the proposed concept design under considerations of PVI tactile actuation, color perception, and learnability. The proposed interface automatically translates reference colors into spatial tactile patterns. A range of achromatic colors and six prominent basic colors with three levels of chroma and values are considered for the cross-modular association. In addition, an analog tactile color watch design has been proposed. This scheme enables PVI to explore artwork or real-life object color by identifying the reference colors through a color sensor and translating them to the tactile interface. The color identification tests using this scheme on the developed prototype exhibit good recognition accuracy. The workload assessment and usability evaluation for PVI demonstrate promising results. This suggest that the proposed scheme is appropriate for tactile color exploration.

Contemporary art is evolving beyond simply looking at works, and the development of various sensory technologies has had a great influence on culture and art. Accordingly, opportunities for the visually impaired to appreciate visual artworks through various senses such as auditory and tactile senses are expanding. However, insufficient sound expression and lack of portability make it less understandable and accessible. This paper attempts to convey a color and depth coding scheme to the visually impaired, based on alternative sensory modalities, such as hearing (by encoding the color and depth information with 3D sounds of audio description) and touch (to be used for interface-triggering information such as color and depth). The proposed color-coding scheme represents light, saturated, and dark colors for red, orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, and purple. The paper’s proposed system can be used for both mobile platforms and 2.5D (relief) models.

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