EAGER: Sonifying Cyber-Security Cues for Internet Users Who Are Visually Impaired

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The Internet is one of the primary communication media for users who are visually impaired. However, the vulnerability of this underserved population of Internet users to various forms of cyber-attacks has deteriorated the effective use of online services offered for general Internet users. The screen reader tools often overwhelm users with visual disability by providing large amounts of text, which may lead those users to ignore that information. An ignored security warning may harm users and make them vulnerable to various forms of cyber-threats. This project translates security cues and warnings into various forms of tones and sounds through sonification. It takes a security cue or warning message and composes the most effective pitch/sound to represent the security warning and conveys the security information to the users who are visually impaired through sounds instead of text verbalized by screen readers. The sonified security warnings undergo extensive usability testing in order to assess the effectiveness of the sonified security cues. The broader impact of this sonification project includes providing a sonification-based technology to alert Internet users who are visually impaired and assist them to make an informed decision when encountering security warnings and to ensure that those security warnings are not overlooked. The sonification-based technology for transforming security warnings to sounds can be integrated to any popular Internet Web browser.