These tools help visually impaired scientists read data and journals

A small but growing group of researchers is working to make science more accessible to scientists with limited vision. Innovative software and modes of presentation are helping to broaden access to scientific literature. Sonification provides a way for scientists with visual limitations to "see" data; by translating numerical values into sounds with certain parameters — for example, a star’s brightness might be encoded as pitch — researchers can home in on important changes. Highcharts, a charting library service, developed its free tool for exploring charts with sonification at Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab, an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing.