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Developers & MIDI 2.0 Specifications
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Earlier this month (February 2024), ATHAN BILLIAS was quoted in a great article by JANKO ROETTGERS on Fast Company about building more accessible music tech for the blind and visually impaired musicians, like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Andrea Bocelli.
For example, when I look through my plugin libraries, I could only find one manufacturer (iZotope) that had basic keyboard navigation through the UI—which is a very basic level of accessibility support. In fact, when I reached out to Uhrs Heckman at U-HE about adding tab support to his newest product that's in the works (Zebra3), I first got a lot of excuses why it wasn't possible, and then then more openly hostile comments as I offered examples on how this could be accomplished.
Sadly, I wonder how the industry can move forward with making their software more accessible without clearer midi standards like WCAG has, in addition to more scrutiny for products sold in the US and EU to be in compliance to ADA and EAA legislation.
This topic was modified 10 months ago 3 times by Jer Gallagher
Posted : 01/03/2024 6:25 am
[...]and then then more openly hostile comments [...]
That's really unfortunate. So many people don't realize how important accessibility is, until they're the ones who need it.
Posted : 04/03/2024 9:01 pm
While it's definitely bollocks that it is impossible (and is always replaceable with "I don't have enough interest or manpower or the money to do it in some acceptable timeframe"), accessibility is complicated enough for most developers to depend on a small number of libraries to provide the necessary features and design their product with it in mind from the start. I've read comments made by people experienced in developing such features and they emphasised that it is a highly difficult task to add accessibility features *afterwards*.
I would guess that U-He has built their frameworks by themselves, presumably built up since the early days of U-He where inclusiveness was not too much talked about.
I'm very sorry to hear that he responded to you in a manner that made you feel that way.
Posted : 14/03/2024 6:45 am
