Separate Accessibility Forum at KVR Audio and an Idea about Music Accessibility Standard (MAS)

[BlindMusician]

Hello all KVR Members,
I am a blind hobbyist Musician (hence my profile name is "BlindMusician"). I would like to say that I would want to improve the accessibility of music hardware and software by giving instructions (mainly from the user's perspective) on how to improve it. I am also aware of the current music accessibility situation and am a Business Information Technology student with a specialization (through deepening professional studies) in accessibility, C and C++ (basics of those subjects only). However, even though I am a student, I would like to start the discussion about the Music Accessibility Standard (MAS). Thsi is not just a thought that came into my mind. It has stayed there several months while I have learned new things from the global level of accessibility and gained the basic coding understanding. I have been encountering accessibility issues in all the current technologies (because they were done for sighted, not also for the disabled people). However, due to the fact that the accessibility knowledge in general has increased slowly but steadily, sooner or later it will come to the music industry aswell. Because my message is detailed, I have split it into two sections:
1. The Music Accessibility Forum at KVR, and
2. Music accessibility Standard (MAS)
1. The Music Accessibility Forum at KVR
I have been searching a suitable forum for accessibility-related discussion here at KVR Audio since this forum is one of the most suitable places to discuss the subject, because there are plugin, application and plugin developers and their users here. However, I couldn't find the suitable place (except this forum) here, and sent a private message and an email to KVR personnel without receiving any answer to it (because of this, I decided to write the answer here). In my opinion, this forum is too wide for discussing just the accessibility, so a new forum (like "Music Accessibility Forum") would be created by a KVR moderator to stimulate this subject. THis would make it more clear to the whole forum and anyone visiting here that there would be a specific, accessibility-related forum for all the discussion related to music software, hardware and, in adition to these, physical accessibility issues (such as recording labels for the blind etc) related somehow to the music.
2. Music accessibility Standard (MAS)
Like I said in the introductory part of my message, I am aware of the current accessibility status in music. It is, as you might expect, quite negative reading. There is one company, Native Instruments GmBH, who has somehow improved the accessibility of their Komplete Kontrol MIDI keyboards so that a blind (or someone else needing speech) can use the keyboard with NI (Native Instruments) products and some other products that support the keyboard's .nksf format. However, the accessibility stops there and does not apply to the other products, including, without limitation, the Kontakt sampler, Tractor DJ 2, Reaktor, FM8 and other plugins and libraries of the company. Also, because the disabled are small in numbers (eg there are much less disabled than non-disabled persons) and because the topic has not been publicly discussed continuously, there is very little research done on the matter. Emma Frid, who currently works in France and graduated from a Swedish university in 2020, made her doctoral dissertation about musical instruments. One of the articles was entitled "Accessibible Musical Digital Instruments (ADMIs)" where she said that only very little has been done to improve the accessibility of the musical instruments (Frid 2020). In addition to this, there is no current accessibility standard for the music industry (however, there are many accessibility standards for web, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)). Because of this, it would be a high time if we started creating together the Music Accessibility Standard (MAS), whose goal would be to improve the accessibility in three main areas: product accessibility (digital or physical accessibility), music hardware and music software. Below is a message excerpt I sent to mr. Ben Turl, the manager of the KVR Audio (in quotes) describing the process and the standard more widely:
"I introduced very shortly the idea about Music Accessibility
Standard, MAS, which would be heavily based on currend de-facto web
accessibility standard combination WCAG (Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines,
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/)
and ARIA (Web Accessibility
Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications,
https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/),
and would also use other similar
documents describing the technical accessibility issues and how they
should be overcome technically (this also includes WCAG ICT document
which describes how to implement accessiblity solutions for persons
with disabilities in non-web products, see
https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2ict/).
In addition to these technical
standards and supporting documents, the standard would be based on
functional performance standards that are generally used in ICT
product development and measurement. Moreover, the standard would also
have citations to well-known and well-working accessibility evaluation
methods (perhaps as its supporting document "How to Apply Functional
Performance Standards to Music Accessibility Standards (HAPSMAS)").
This would, of course, require many years of development before the
MAS 1.0 would be released. It would, where possible, be based on both
functional standards and technical standards stated above, and have
its own unique supporting documents and success criteria. One of them,
for instance, would be that a person using a screen reader can perform
the same amount of tasks, whose nature and difficulty level varies
from easy to hard, like a person who uses a mouse. These would, for
instance, include things such as clear navigation and screen reader
support guidance. Finally, it would epmhasize the user-centric point
of view in the functional performance in addition to the technical
point of view in order to make it more user-centric. In addition, it
wouldhave citations to well-known policies and monitoring (would also
be Quality Assurance, QA) policies found from the companies,
universities and other orgahizations that are well-working.
This process would have many interested parties, all known as a
committee or working group (such as "Music Accessibility Standard
Working Group, MASWG), developing and maintaining the standard
professionally: projects such as RAMPD and Attitude is Everything,
music instrument, hardware and software manufacturers (like Yamaha
Corporation from Japan, M-Audio (part of InMusic Brands) from the
United States of America, Propellerhead from Sweden, Arturia from the
United Kingdom, Tone2 from Germany, Ableton GmbH from Germany, Native
Instruments GmbH from Germany and Steimberg Media Technologies GmbH,
the inventor of Virtual Studio Technology (VST) from Germany), maybe
even some official supporters of RAMPD (such as artists with no
disabilities) and experts working with people with disabilities (such
as accessibility experts). There would also be user representatives
from different disability groups such as the deaf, the blind (totally
physically blind), people with low vision, people with neurological
disabilities etc. However, it is worth noting that those people that
we don't currently have any clearly-defined standard or development
method wouldn't be included to the standard, because there is no a
straightforward way to include these people to the process yet. The
manufacturers might be on very difficult problems if they tried to
apply the techniques for, for instance, to the cognitive disabilities
because there is not currently a common understanding on how and in
what way this would be tested. However, the Music Accessibility
Standard Working Group (MASWG) would already discuss with these groups
and experts, while the standard-making would be going on, to discuss
ways on including previously excluded people (such as people with
cognitive disabilities) to the standard as soon as there is
clear-enough described processes on how to test, evaluate, design and
measure accessibility for person with cognitive disabilities."
sources:
Frid. E. Accessible Musical Digital Instruments Accessible Digital Musical Instruments—A Review of Musical Interfaces in Inclusive Music Practice. An article from the doctoral dissertaion of Emma Frid. Accessed on 2.3.2022. Rethrieved from https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/mti/m ... 057-v4.pdf.
Kind regards,
Juho

[klavierr]

Deeply appreciate you posting this and bringing this issue to the attention of KVR. I am heavily visually impaired and will probably lose my remaining vision in the next 15-20 years, and the complete lack of accessibility in DAWs and VSTs is astounding, but also not surprising at all. It's been a very soboring thought that because of this, I essentially have a time limit on how much longer I can make music in-the-box.

Excuse my pessimistic view on this, but from my experience, even getting web devs to make the most paltry efforts towards making accessible websites for screen-readers is like pulling teeth. I can't imagine corralling able-bodied VST / DAW programmers into following rules will be any easier, but I have very strong feelings about this and I will look at your resources. The only way to make change is through concentrated effort!

[Hink]

first let me say I am sorry no one got back to you, I checked my inbox and didnt see anything back to the 1st of the year. Typically this is handled by Ben, as I once started a forum here as well (and in case you dont know me, I am a mod) I suggest you go to Everything Else forum and start a thread about this, one you might write to introduce your idea.

I think you will get more attention from members in Everything Else and leave this here for Ben as well. From there if all goes well we can get Ben to start a forum for you, I will certainly advocate for you and track progress on this. I obviously cannot speak for Ben or anything, so please keep that in mind but I will do what I can do to help you with this, oh and thank you.

[arkmabat]

Better hardware integration is a must. It seems like a Launchpad midi controller could render the mouse useless if programmed to a daw correctly. If it had braille on some of the buttons it would be even easier. There should be a way to use Mouse keys or macros to snap to on-screen buttons by pressing a button. This is an issue I will keep in mind as there are certainly ways to make music creation more accessible to all.

[BertKoor]

Regarding the accessibility forum, that reminds me of this. Somebody started a thread titled something alike "can we have a video production forum?" it feels like years ago. The forum itself never materialised, but that long thread itself now virtually IS the forum.
I'm reading a lot of the topics here for years, and I have a soft spot for visually impaired musicians. I had a coworker that used Cakewalk Sonar with the Jaws screenreader, he even did hardware maintenance, swapping RAM modules, installing PCI cards. I also had a blind keyboard player in the band that was constantly on his smart phone using the touch screen. Amazing, huge respect. But anyway, I estimate a topic regarding accessibility comes up about three times a year here. I doubt that is enough to warrant a specialised forum.
So I endorse the idea to do this in the "Everything Else" section. Perhaps it can be made a sticky topic, so it stays on the radar.

[BlindMusician]

Hello Everyone,
Thanks for your comments and suggestions! I did not know that we have even visually impaired user here at KVR audio who also has fought with these issues than I (ie. inaccessibility in the music industry). Most probably I will start a new topic here because, actually, this forum would fullfill the accessibility need. The only issue is that, in this (most likely) case, it would be a bit more difficult and effort-demanding for the forum users to find the topic under "Everything else" (especially screenreader users with inexperience on them and other assistive technologies). However, in my opinion, if you have experience in navigating nearly inaccessible websites (ie. sites with no headings but a lot of links), you should be quite fine finding this post as screen reader user. In KVR, generally speaking, the site can be used with a screen reader and there are some headings (but not much enough to make the navigation accessible, eg. the posts are not separated by headings having the post's Author).
I am going to create a new topic to this forum now with an introductory post that is similar to the section 2 in the first post of this forum thread. The thread will be called "Music Accessibility Standard (MAS)". Together we can generate something great (or, at least, raise awareness of something great) that benefits, in the end, also non-disabled person!
Kind regards,
Juho