a sound first approach to opening the world
Empowering Non-Visual Communication for Blind & Low-Vision teenagers
/ Client: Visio school
/ Industry: education for low sight/blind secundary schools
/ Deliverables: to make social connection, self-expression,And confidence learnable through sound
Project and concept / sound strategy: Stéphanie Dufrane
Sound design: Manfred Roovers
Sonic research: Caitlyn Trevor
The Visio School Project is an educational initiative that rethinks how young people with visual impairments learn essential social and emotional skills.
Our aim is simple: to make social connection, self-expression, and confidence learnable through sound, voice, presence and guided interaction, without relying on sight.
This project is co-created with educators and grounded in science/classroom insights. The full lesson framework, exercises and behavioural goals are derived from field testing in schools.
The science behind the project
Research in auditory cognition shows that blind and low-vision individuals rely on:
prosody (pitch, tone, rhythm) to infer intention
vocal spectral cues to decode emotional nuance
micro-dynamics in breath and articulation to detect confidence, discomfort, attraction or withdrawal
spatial hearing to read proximity, group dynamics and safety
pattern recognition to understand behavioural shifts
temporal structure to anticipate interaction flow
These skills are not secondary but primary and they form a complete, rich, and autonomous interface with the world.
The project’s exercises are designed around these abilities: students learn to express, interpret and navigate social situations using the channel that is already central to their perception: sound.
The lesson structure, built in collaboration with teachers, already reflects this shift. For example, students practise expressing emotions exclusively through voice, posture cues interpreted auditorily, and contextual sound-awareness exercises.
Rethinking Social Communication Through Sound
The Sound-Based Learning Project challenges one of the biggest blind spots in education: most social-emotional learning is designed from the perspective of sighted people.
We build a sound-first curriculum that starts from the perceptual strengths of blind and low-vision students.
Not as compensation or adaptation, but as a fundamentally different way of understanding and navigating the world.
The project develops scientifically grounded, sound-only educational material that helps students:
understand non-verbal communication through auditory cues
decode emotion and intention through voice quality, rhythm, tempo and prosody
interpret “social distance,” confidence, interest or hesitation through sound-space information
build confidence in real-world and online communication
shape their own identity and autonomy through sonic awareness
Everything is built on what sound uniquely makes possible.
Why It Works
Because it meets students where they are.
Because it uses sound, presence and conversation as primary learning tools, not secondary adaptations.
Because it makes invisible social rules visible through voice, rhythm, space and guided interaction.
Most of all:
Because it treats blind and low-vision teens not as exceptions, but as young people with the same desire for connection, confidence and self-expression as anyone else.
