Push for the Blind?

[jestermgee]

I had an interesting call from someone in America (I live in Australia) in regards to the presets pack I created for browsing Omnisphere from Komplete Kontrol. Basically a user who is blind found it invaluable as they were finally able to browse and control Omnisphere using the KK software.

We got to talking because he wanted to know if I understood how screen readers worked as he wanted to see if it would be possible to develop assistance for plugins. I mentioned how the Push controller allows you to almost completely control and navigate sounds and after some talk we wondered if there may be any possible way (with possible input from Ableton) that you could intercept information from a Push controller such as when browsing a list of files could you "grab" the name of a highlighted entry to send to another piece of software such as a screen reader so you could "hear" what you are doing.

I know there is no API for Push but would be interesting if you could touch a controller on Push and have it speak what it was. Sight is so easily taken for granted and the enthusiasm this guy had, especially to call long distance and discuss for an hour really makes me want to help users like him out.

The first test we are doing is to see if we can use Komplete Kontrol and some of my scripts to simply disable the effects section in Omnisphere with a single button using mouse and key movements. Then from there who knows.

[Tagor]

for 16 macros one of those should show the readings - would be nice from ableton to make them work
http://www.zm-online.de/imgs/1/0/7/1/0/ ... 6fd3e2.jpg

but omnisphere has so many controls unreachable via midi...

[H20nly]

wow, who'd have thought?

i don't have anything to offer more than my sincerest hope that this is something you can see through to the best possible form of fruition with him... and...

bump.

[jestermgee]

I was amazed too but I guess music is accessible to people that cannot see.

This guys wife helps him find the controls he is after and he uses the KK S61 keyboard with mapped controls for plugins. He can remember which pages and knobs a control is on and basically because I have mapped 95% of the common controls over pages it's quite accessible for him to use.

As he said though, there are some things he would love to be able to do with a simple key combo or something such as disable the reverb on a preset to then use a reverb in a DAW. Anything you can click can be scripted and I wondered in terms of Push (or even KK) if there was information I could possibly hook into to then just send to a screen reader to announce what you are touching and controlling.

Probably out of my expertese as I am only basically qualified in programming but someone who understands the python and how Push works more could possibly open it up to a new user base. This guy is willing to invest in a solution because as he says, there simply are no options for blind users when it comes to music software and he seems to really enjoy it.

I tried to operate just something on my PC with my eyes closed... Couldn't even launch Live from the desktop (but did somehow send live shortcut to the bin)

[H20nly]

(but did somehow send live shortcut to the bin)

[login]

Just a random tought:

Push browser must be a PITA to use for blind people, but maybe if Abes implement browsing with the top arrows so that you can move step by step (and maybe even hot swap) it could be used by blind people.

Coming back to you main problem, a while back I used Bome MIDI translator to send some key shortcuts from Push (open/close gui and using pads as navigation arrows in the plug in browser), as macro keys in Gaming mouse/Kb. MAybe you could explore Key mapping.

[jestermgee]

Yeah I use Bomes currently and do the exact same thing with my MCU (have buttons to open, save etc).

The way he works with his current DAW (Sonar) and Komplete Kontrol is basically muscle memory where the KK browser software does not "wrap" so he knows if he rotates the browser wheel a dozen times to the left it goes to the top of a list (not wrap around) so he can visualise where he is and steps through pages... Basically he can "see" the structure. The issue is if lists wrap he cannot find a point to start.

Not in front of Push but if you browse through the lists does it stop at the end or wrap around?

It's a challenge for sure and the issue from a scripting perspective is the Live window and most plugin windows are designed for multi-platform so no text/hooks are exposed to the OS and other programs to link into. My thinking was since data is passed to and from push via python that something could interpret that and send it to screen readers or something.

I've offered to assist as much as I can within my own limits and turned down his proposal to fund my time since I have no idea what I could even do but admire his persistence especially since he was not born blind but rather lost his sight as a kid through abuse which was hard to hear as a parent myself. Would love to be able to even offer a simple tool to help him use his musical tools a bit better, even if it can simply do a few clicks here and there with keyboard shortcuts.

Makes me appreciate my stupid stigmatized colour-blind eyes a lot more though.

[iamtwoscoops]

I came across this thread in search for something similar for my friend who is also blind. We routinely work together on projects in Ableton using the Push controller and we have always thought it would be useful for him to have access to some sort of Speak over plugin, app etc that would help him navigate Ableton. This thread is a few years old at this point. Have any of you had any luck sourcing/developing such a resource? I figured this would be a good place to start considering we have a similar objective here. Thank you in advance for any and all help/guidance!

[[jur]]

I had an idea for a "stupid" M4L device that would make a sound for "each" action on the software.
That's kind of a joke, because I thought it'd be funny to have an annoying "soundify" (what's the word?) audio software, just like UI interfaces make sound in movies, or in applications where it have a function of course.
The idea was to observe as much things as possible through M4L and trigger a pre-recorded sample corresponding to X action every time the action is performed in Live.
Anyway, I probably won't ever spend time patching this, even though the ida really amuses me, but that could be a possible way to look at.
The Push API is also available on GitHub for quite some times now too.

You should also contact support@ableton.com and ask around. I know some of our designers are seriously thinking about disabilities and how to improve Live without ignoring this part of the user base.

[jestermgee]

I came across this thread in search for something similar for my friend who is also blind. We routinely work together on projects in Ableton using the Push controller and we have always thought it would be useful for him to have access to some sort of Speak over plugin, app etc that would help him navigate Ableton. This thread is a few years old at this point. Have any of you had any luck sourcing/developing such a resource? I figured this would be a good place to start considering we have a similar objective here. Thank you in advance for any and all help/guidance!

No I never managed to progress with anything here as much as I would have liked, I had a full time job at the time and no time to really spend on the task

I have worked with a lot of blind users over the years tho and still assist today with the NKS libraries for Komplete Kontrol. I did manage to address the original problem the user had with enable/disable effects in Omnisphere by creating another script that updated the NKS library files I had already created and enabled automation and mapped these into the template I designed so that was a win (tho took months to figure out just how to do it).

A DAW is much harder to address because there are just so many parameters but with something like Max and maybe an externally running process to do things like image positioning and take in custom keyboard and gesture commands it could be developed a bit to control Live, maybe not Push as it really is a visual controller.

There is actually quite a lot of blind and visually impaired users out there into music and production which I guess makes perfect sense since it is something you hear but the tools they have when it comes to working within the box are quite limited. Might be something I should again look into and see if there is something that can be done.