Beyond Vision: Black Country Women, a spatial sound journey, is a Digital First, immersive experience built by Sarah-Ann Cromwell. Participants can walk through, up to, and explore the spatial sound of Warley Woods and hear stories of joy from Sandra, Perm and Saba from Sandwell Visually Impaired. Play Testers wear a Meta Quest headset, their vision is restricted, there are no graphics or illustrations, and they are led by a sighted companion.
Freya Shaw is the Audio Engineer & is a registered blind sound designer. She is founder of Immersion Sound Studio Ltd, and developer of Hodr Engine a no-code development tool for visually impaired developers. Red Nought the Engine Architect, built the underlying game-engine that allows visually impaired gamers to play complex games without assistance
Sarah-Ann explained: “I wanted to be curious about spatial sound, and I wanted to elevate the voices of my visually impaired and blind female friends. I am very grateful to Saba, Perm and Sandra for sharing their stories with me and to Freya and John for building this hard-to-explain Digital First project”
Sandra Troth said: “Congratulations on ‘Beyond Vision’ which is a splendid interactive programme. Really enjoyed trying it out last Friday It’s a great concept and has tons of potential. Thank you very much for inviting me to be part of it all.”
A sighted participant reflected: “I genuinely feel that this experience will help me better support and understand the needs of people with sight loss. Not only that, it was lovely to listen to Perm’s story, so inspiring to hear her positivity and how she is not defined by her visual impairment.”
Beyond Vision: Black Country Women was commissioned by The Space, supported by Creative Black Country, with funding from Arts Council England.
