VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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produc3rboy
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Joined: Thu Feb 07, 2013 5:10 am

VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Post by produc3rboy » Thu May 17, 2018 2:40 pm

Hello, recently a friend of mine came to me with an ableton Push 2. He is blind and wanted to ask me if I can help him use it.

Before he was blind, he was able to make beats using the MPC. My question: is it possible for Ableton and/or Mac OS High Sierra able to provide VoiceOver option? The idea is whenever he touches or moves a knob/button on the Push 2, he wants to hear what the knob does and the values it changes to. He's good at memorizing the feel of hardware.

Thanks for reading!

Cuica man
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Location: West Coast U.S.
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Re: VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Post by Cuica man » Thu May 17, 2018 11:19 pm

Maybe with Max for live. I’m not sure.. but it’s something i asked for in a survey many years ago. My friend uses sonar with cake talking to do her music. I’ve figured out different ways to do workarounds a mind allowing her to get all of the functions out of her virtual instruments. Message me if u need more info

Betov75
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Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:07 pm

Re: VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Post by Betov75 » Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:14 pm

Hi,

I'm visually impaired myself. I've tried to get Ableton's attention for accessibility, worked very hard on suggestions and was totally giving my time but they don't really care about that. It's a great software from a great company but accesssibility is not at all a priority to them.

I'm now using Reaper on windows and Mac with the OSARA extension. Not the same approach as Live but it's fantastically smooth, stable and the OSARA extension makes it fully accessible. Not only parts of Reaper; everything. A dream come true for a blind user. Everything can be eedited, all parameters, everything can be mapped using shortcuts and midi controllers.

I'm orchestrating scores with 90+ tracks with it.

I've adapted Live for the blind, using BOME midi translator on Windows but it was way to much work for not enough results. It was able to tell me the track name I was on it, the clip name, the song position in bars, etc.. On Windows only.

I'm still using Live and Push as a beat maker, but nothing more.

On Mac Logic Pro X is also fully accessible for the blind but, using both, I prefer Reaper and OSARA extension for many reasons.

Hope it helps,
Patrick.

Tone Deft
Posts: 24152
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2006 5:19 pm

Re: VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Post by Tone Deft » Thu Jun 25, 2020 6:47 pm

Betov75 wrote:
Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:14 pm
I've adapted Live for the blind, using BOME midi translator on Windows but it was way to much work for not enough results. It was able to tell me the track name I was on it, the clip name, the song position in bars, etc.. On Windows only.

I'm still using Live and Push as a beat maker, but nothing more.

On Mac Logic Pro X is also fully accessible for the blind but, using both, I prefer Reaper and OSARA extension for many reasons.

Hope it helps,
Patrick.
this is great to hear! re: your work with Live and Bomes, is that project a matter of man-hours? as in you have the framework down, you need people to do the grunt work? there's a network of people for these kinds of projects locally to me here:
https://lighthouse-sf.org/lighthouse-labs/
you can pitch ideas to the Lighthouse Tech community and get feedback, mentorship, maybe even collaborators.

amazing to hear that Logic is fully accessible, my hat's off to them.

look at how many views this thread has gotten (700+) with so few replies. my guess is that it's showing up in peoples' searches when they google "Ableton accessibility"
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... essibility
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz

Adriani
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:14 am

Re: VoiceOver Accessibility option for a blind producer.

Post by Adriani » Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:15 am

Hey there, is there any update for this project? I am a blind user and would love to see improvements in this area. I have also a proposal on how this could work with NVDA, but for that the ableton installation should come with the NVDA controllerclient.dll. Here is the documentation
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/tree/m ... llerClient

There is also the file NVDAController.h which lists the definitions for C. There are also some examples on how this is being implemented practically, the software must call the functions from the NVDA controllerClient.dll in order for NVDA to speak the elements of the software.
Here are some examples:
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/m ... _csharp.cs
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/blob/m ... _python.py
https://github.com/SWEN-789/screen-reader-ptr5201

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