The Haptic Wave: A Device for Feeling Sound

We demonstrate the Haptic Wave, a device that allows audio engineers with visual impairments to "feel" the am- plitude of sound, gaining salient information that sighted engineers get through visual waveforms. The demo will allow visitors, sighted or visually-impaired, to sweep back- wards and forwards through audio recordings (snippets of pop songs and voice recordings), feeling sound amplitude through haptic feedback delivered by a motorized fader. The result of Participatory Design, Workshopping, and Re- search through Design methods, the Haptic Wave has been previously exhibited at the Research Through Design Con- ference (RTD), Visually Impaired Musicians’ Lives confer- ence, and has been trialed in real world settings in record- ing studios by users with visual impairments in the UK and USA. A detailed account of the research and design pro- cess of the Haptic Wave has been accepted as a full paper at CHI’16