A New Way to Read, Not See, Maps
From: Wired News

Jason Morris uses a trackball to move a cursor across a map of ancient
Britain dotted with Roman forts and cities. As he passes over a location, a
speech synthesizer pronounces the name - and will spell it, too, as sometimes
the computer's Latin pronunciation isn't up to snuff. When the cursor passes
over land, the sound of horses galloping comes from the computer's speakers.
Move it over water and the sound of waves breaking on a beach emanates. If
he's wearing stereo headphones, Morris will even hear the sound in the
correct "location" relative to the cursor - to the left or right, for
instance. 

The software, developed as part of an undergraduate computer science class
project, could give Morris, a graduate student in the classics department at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, access to maps that sighted
students take for granted.

Read the full story at:
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,54916,00.html