Hello all,

My apologies if this may well be the wrong place for this, however... I was invited and encouraged to become a member here and I hope that I may become of service somehow within this amazing community.

I am a fully blind musician and composer, I hit 40 late last year, but I don't feel it. I became totally blind (see nothing but what I describe as "black") over 25 years ago. I've always been within the music scene and became a professional musician.

Over the years, I've witnessed some of the best of accessibility and the worst of applcations and hardware, as well as manufacturers who's interests don't include supporting musicians with sight impairment or sight loss, but I'm not going to go in to that.

This post, I just want to share a little on the mac side of accessibility and MIDI Music.

I started in the days of Beige and G3 blue/white macs, Protools TDM mix 5 on MacOS 9.2x and I confess, I miss those old days. That said, over the many years, things changed for the better. The launch of MacOS 10.4 Tiger and the first official public build of VoiceOver, alright it wasn't as usable as some hoped and the music side of things wasn't going to happen for a while to come. That changed several OS builds later and Logic Pro X 10.1 when finally, VoiceOver could take control of and navigate the environment. It had a long way to go and we got there in time. Sadly though, although accessible with a screen reader, Logic Pro X became so bulked out that it doesn't feel like a DAW for pro's and composers, It's too "one size fits all" and the user interface can be long winded to navigate and interact with. even working with software instruments and effects, it's lost it's way.

I'd say part of the problem is how MacOS itself is getting bulkier, more GUI intensive and packed with things we don't need around a DAW for efficiency's sake. We can't tailor the OS by installation to do what we actually want of it, can't remove the tons of junk, etc, not like the old versions of MacOS 10.4x through 10.6.8, etc or even MacOS 9x classic, We've got so over involved with tons of blah.

Now, ok, AVID's ProTools, I always loved, I moved to HD9 when it became VoiceOver compatible and it changed how I started to work again, but the model that AVID was going to no longer fitted me, it wasn't financially viable constantly paying yearly upgrades, nor subscription fees, etc, so I stuck to Logic Pro X.

My mission over the years was to try and spread some positive advocacy towards other developers, like MOTU, Steinberg (now yamaha), Propellerheads, etc but sadly, either promises passed by or were broken, or there just wasn't the desire to find ways to make the software compatible with screen readers like VoiceOver for Mac, or JAWS for Windows. 

It should be a case that  all DAW's of today should be accessible for those with sight impairment or sight loss, but sadly it isn't.

I admit and confess that I miss my old studio, more and more, a studio that was tactile, yes, ran a mac, etc, but the main setup was so tactile, I could undertake projects for clients and manage, I had the option of using a mac as a tape machine and edit suite, or a rack mouted recording setup and mixing manually, etc, mastering to external media, etc.

Today though, I feel misplaced, I don't have the fire in my stomach to write and record like I used to, because today's technologies don't include the blind community in their scope of development.

A machine I miss more than anything, a product that could still be made today but better, was an akai DPS24 workstation, it was tactile, I didn't need a screen reader to tell me tons of stuff I didn't want to know, 4 key shortcuts, etc, just straightforward process, tactile, great sound, portable for location work, etc. I'd give anything to own one again. Perhaps I'm stupidly hoping that one day, today's musical instrument instrument and equipment manufacturers might realise something's wrong and maybe, just maybe help to fix the damage the early 2000's caused, partly due to EU  abuse of power when products were being manufactured, or other issues.

If today, someone out there, heard the voices of blind musicians, worked with us to fix the harms caused, provided better education, support, integration, communication with disabled musicians to find out what manufacturers could do to make life a little easier. We;re not asking for the earth, or the moon for that matter, just those basic elements so we can achieve what we want to.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant or if it's in the wrong place, I apologise if so. To any admin, if you wish to remove this post, that's ok with me.

lew.