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Software engineers have figured out how to turn charts into music for the blind

• neilcrj 10y ago
  This is the problem Richard MacDuff was wrestling with at the beginning of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I love it when sci-fi from my childhood becomes reality.
  • prefect42 10y ago
    Oddly enough, that was the first thing that popped into my head, when seeing the title.
  • fhood 10y ago
    Thank you for reminding me that that book exists. It's been a few years since I last re-read it.
• tcrews 10y ago
  The title is very clickbaity. Just search for "chart sonification" and see there is a lot of research in this area. Maybe they meant to emphasize that this is a browser extension?
  • 10dpd 10y ago
    Agreed - this idea has been around since 1914.
  • owlninja 10y ago
    This HN thread is the third result already o_O
• Mizza 10y ago
  At Science Hack Day, me and some friends built a version of Super Mario for the Blind that you can play in a similar way: Play: http://gleitzman.com:1339/ http://gleitzman.com:1339/ Source: https://github.com/miserlou/jsnes https://github.com/miserlou/jsnes After a few tries, you can actually get through the first few levels!
  • gtirloni 10y ago
    It's an interesting idea! How does one know what each sound represents?
  • obstbraende 10y ago
    it doesn't seem to register key presses on chrome 56 (mac os)
• Redditshill 10y ago
  I know it's not exactly the same thing, but reminds me of this video from a while back: This App Turns Your Photos into Music If You Want to Do That For Some Reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpNgsU9o4ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpNgsU9o4ik
• ge96 10y ago
  Didn't this lady do this who is an astrophysicist (also blind) something about gamma ray burst (heard it on NPR podcast)
• andrewclunn 10y ago
  I'm holding out for the pie charts that are tasty, relationship charts that make it through the tough times, and line charts that get me high as fuck!