STEAM education’s heavy reliance on visuals notoriously throws up access barriers for students with blindness and low vision (BLV). BLV space scientists use advanced data sonification tools to access their scientific data. It makes sense to try and prepare young students for this future. Sonokids applied accessible sonification design to develop CosmoBally on Sonoplanet, a free educational game app for iOS and Android. On Sonoplanet everything is sonified: “open your ears” and listen. Educators have reported young BLV learners successfully and enthusiastically engaging with the games in the app, such as listening to sonified shapes, drawing in sound, and tracing a sonified line. Some show surprising ability. The app has sparked genuine interest in astronomy, in and beyond the classroom.

About Phia Damsma

Phia Damsma is Co-founder and Creative Director at Sonokids Australia. She has more than 26 years’ experience with developing the “Ballyland” suite of accessible educational game apps that support the development of STEAM skills by young learners with blindness and low vision. Phia is lead of the “LEARN” working group of the Sonification World Chat, presented for the Audible Universe Workshops and has co-authored a paper published in Nature Astronomy on the topic of astronomy data sonification in research, outreach and education. Phia was president of the South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment (SPEVI Inc) from 2018-2025.