Mixed-reality (MR) soundscapes blend real-world sound with virtual audio from hearing devices, presenting intricate auditory information that is hard to discern and differentiate. This is particularly challenging for blind or visually impaired individuals, who rely on sounds and descriptions in their everyday lives. To understand how complex audio information is consumed, we analyzed online forum posts within the blind community, identifying prevailing challenges, needs, and desired solutions. We synthesized the results and propose SoundShift for increasing MR sound awareness, which includes six sound manipulations: Transparency Shift, Envelope Shift, Position Shift, Style Shift, Time Shift, and Sound Append. To evaluate the effectiveness of SoundShift, we conducted a user study with 18 blind participants across three simulated MR scenarios, where participants identified specific sounds within intricate soundscapes. We found that SoundShift increased MR sound awareness and minimized cognitive load. Finally, we developed three real-world example applications to demonstrate the practicality of SoundShift.

翻译：混合现实（MR）声景将现实世界声音与听觉设备中的虚拟音频相融合，呈现出难以辨识与区分的复杂听觉信息。这对于依赖声音和描述进行日常生活的盲人或视障人士尤为具有挑战性。为理解复杂音频信息的接收方式，我们分析了盲人社区在线论坛的讨论帖，识别出普遍存在的挑战、需求及期望的解决方案。综合研究结果，我们提出SoundShift以提升MR声音感知能力，其包含六种声音操控技术：透明度变换、包络变换、位置变换、风格变换、时间变换及声音附加。为评估SoundShift的有效性，我们在三种模拟MR场景中对18位盲人参与者开展用户研究，要求参与者在复杂声景中识别特定声音。研究发现SoundShift能提升MR声音感知能力并降低认知负荷。最后，我们开发了三个现实应用示例以展示SoundShift的实用性。