SoundBlender: Manipulating Sounds for Accessible Mixed-Reality Awareness

Sounds are everywhere, from real-world content to virtual audio presented by hearing devices, which create a mixed-reality soundscape that entails rich but intricate information. However, sounds often overlap and conflict in priorities, which makes them hard to perceive and differentiate. This is exacerbated in mixed-reality settings, where real-world and virtual sounds can conflict with each other. This may exacerbate the awareness of mixed reality for blind people who heavily rely on audio information in their everyday life. To address this, we present a sound rendering framework SoundBlender, consisting of six sound manipulators for users to better organize and manipulate real and virtual sounds across time and space: AMBIENCE BUILDER, FEATURE SHIFTER, EARCON GENERATOR, PRIORITIZER, SPATIALIZER, and STYLIZER. We demonstrate how the sound manipulators can increase mixed-reality awareness through a simulated working environment, and a meeting application.