Re: [LAU] Music Editors for Blind Users?

Your post was very long and my response will not directly address what you
wrote. I am quoting something I wrote a couple of years ago about
interfaces for this blind people. It makes a single but I think critical
point.

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years ago someone paid me to do a text-based UI for ardour. it was centered
on very efficient use of the keyboard and using a screen-reader.

the code probably still exists. i don't think it was very successful,
partly for the reasons identified in the text you sent. but i think there
is a more important reason.

working with audio tends to involve the use of the screen to act as a kind
of memory. there are a ton of parameters in play, and its a huge barrier if
you constantly need to remember what they are all set to. the 2d expanse of
the screen represents a kind of 2nd level cache of this information, where
a sighted person can simply glance around and discover what they need to
know about the current state of things.

reproducing this functionality without the information-dense medium that
the screen represents is a HUGE challenge. i've thought about it on and off
every since the "ksi" interface for ardour was done. i have no ideas on how
anyone could make progress on this. i think its a very interesting, very,
very hard problem. i have no time to work on it.

as a practical note, if someone wants to do something like this, it would
obviously be quite likely that basing their efforts on an open source tool
is likely to offer a lot of possibilities that are simply not available
when using closed source tools.

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Received on Sun Mar 2 08:15:02 2014