Thomas Meckel, Dennis Scheiba, Moritz Wesp

Virtual Reality technologies remain largely inaccessible to blind and visually impaired People due to their strong reliance on visual interfaces. At the same time, blind people possess highly developed skills in spatial orientation and navigation through sound. SONA takes this contradiction as its starting point and investigates how VR can be reconceptualized as an inclusive medium by utilising spatial audio as a primary navigation and interaction tool.
Since 2023, SONA has developed Audio-VR works in close collaboration with blind and visually impaired communities in Cologne and North Rhine-Westphalia. This work has produced two formats: SONA – Seeing Sound, a large-scale performative VR installation in complete darkness, where visitors navigate a motion-captured space using spatial audio, sensory shoes, and voice commands, guided by a blind performer; and SONA – Diving in the Dark, a mobile Audio-VR game in which players explore a virtual underwater world — guided entirely by 3D sound — using a smartphone and Headphones with head-tracking as a display-free VR headset.
From a technical perspective, the workshop addresses spatial audio not as an immersive effect but as a functional interface for navigation and interaction. We will discuss the Audio-VR navigation tools developed within the project — including virtual echolocation, a virtual audio cane, and virtual wall membranes — and the design decisions behind them. The technical stack (Unity, Wwise/Audiokinetic, head-tracking via smartphone sensors, voice recognition and microphone input) will be presented alongside the iterative research process and our inclusive worldbuilding methods.
The workshop combines a presentation and discussion of the artistic and technical background with a hands-on opportunity to test SONA – Diving in the Dark.

Homepage: www.sona-vr.com
SONA Film: https://youtu.be/fimLvI4AskU