Current tools for composing with interactive technologies are not accessible to visually impaired composers – graphical patching paradigms have made them user-friendly but ultimately user-hostile for the blind. This presentation addresses this challenge, discussing a new tangible interface and Max programming environment I have designed to be fully accessible to blind composers. The system fosters new possibilities for not just visually impaired but also sighted composers.

Over the past decades, electronic tools have vastly expanded the opportunities for creative musical expression. Modern composers have benefited from this development, with access to ever more powerful and user-friendly technologies. And yet those technologies are not equally accessible to all. The ubiquity of low-contrast visual interfaces, cascading menus, and graphical patching paradigms have made most tools for electronic music composition not user-friendly but ultimately user-hostile for the visually impaired. This paper addresses this challenge, discussing a new interface and Max programming environment I have designed to be fully accessible to blind composers.

Today, the designers of audio software tend to make concessions to visually impaired users by expecting them to understand complex program menus and interfaces through awkward and ineffective screen-readers. I have seen firsthand the uselessness of this approach, in working with a very talented composer who also happens to be visually impaired. I began to wonder: What might it look like to approach the solutions differently, not by making concessions but by making real progress? To design new software and hardware solutions based on assets rather than deficits? To reconceive rather than retrofit? The questions led me to think about all the other sensory modalities—such as tactile and interface-coupled auditory feedback—that could make a software environment fully responsive to all users.

What emerged from this exploration is an original software/hardware system with a custom user interface that gives visually impaired composers the ability to have full access to the creative capacities of the music programming language Max. This enabling technology reverses the inequity of the currently available tools through implementing the principles of universal design: making the tools accessible, understandable, and usable by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. My presentation will discuss this new musical interface and the particular ways that it:

Allows visually impaired composers access to tools that sighted peers use daily
Explores accessible HCI
Fosters striking new possibilities for not just visually impaired but also sighted composers