[LAU] Music Editors for Blind Users?

[david]

Yet we have a member of the list who is blind and works with audio ...

On 03/01/2014 05:51 PM, Paul Davis wrote:
> 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.
>
> -------------
>
> 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.


-- 
David W. Jones
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
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