The matter of differences between sentential representation and textual representation goes back to the question of informational and computational Affordances. While two representations, one textual and the other diagrammatic, can be informationally equivalent, it usually takes more mental computation to arrive at the right inference through text than through a diagram. Diagrams provide an alternative representation in the case of illustrating what sentential or textual representations describe. For blind and visually impaired people, screen-readers are the most commonly used tools for accessing on-screen information, but they typically fail to deliver graphical information in appropriate and flexible ways. As alternatives diagrammatic representations are unavailable for such population of users.

Our current research focuses on identifying appropriate alternative representations that assist the interpretation and navigation of the information encoded in a diagram non-visually. This is looked at through exploring strategies for representing UML class diagrams auditorally.

We will discuss our approach and initial experimentations designed to answers two main questions; the first is which information should be communicated to deliver the full semantics of a diagram; and second how should such information be represented sonically to support the interpretive and navigational tasks necessary for achieving diagram comprehension.

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