I am hoping this wonderful group can brainstorm ideas for this publisher who is actively seeking input about how to make music accessible with a screen reader!
Here is Danielle’s question:
Hi there, I work for a publishing vendor creating content for various education publishers. We are in the process of learning how to best prepare educational materials on musical theory to be readable by JAWS (or a similar screen reader). We have been researching different kinds of software (LimeAloud, Canorus, LilyPond, MuseScore...) to try to find an approach to tag inline musical notes so that they are readable by a screen reader.
At this point, the only other option we can think of would be to try to flatten all of the notes as images and write alt text for each note. This seems like a laborious, cost prohibitive option that might not even be the best one for the student using the text.
Given the extensive experience you have in this field, I was wondering if you might be able to direct me to software that can be used to make musical notes within a text accessible for the visually impaired.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate any insight you might be able to offer.
Best regards,
Danielle
617-818-7123tel:617-818-7123
Danielle.Chouhan@luminad.commailto:Danielle.Chouhan@luminad.com
Hello,
In short, no, screen readers and browsers have not built anything to
natively render Music XML. https://www.musicxml.com/for-developers/
Thus saying, this is a topic that requires programmers at the W3C to
standardize an interface like they did with mathML. I’m sure that music XML
rendering is coming soon to the web in some way, so having a way to both
listen and download the music XML file from the Epub3 book or webpage would
be ideal for now. Once a widget is created that will allow one to get the
same experience that one has in Lime Allowed, then it would be best to use
that.
For now, use canvas and music XML
http://cdm.link/2010/05/music-notation-with-html5-canvas-in-the-browser-standard-formats-for-scores/
.
If this is a problem that the publishers would like solved, then they need
to do the following:
Hire a blind web developer to build a widget that acts like Lime or
Sebelius.
2.
Work with W3C Web Working Group to make the Music XML
https://www.musicxml.com/for-developers/ specification an official
specification, like there is for MathML. https://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/
3.
Work with screen reader manufacturers to build support for rendering
music XML.
I opened an issue https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/9306 on on the
NVDA Github to get a screen reader vendor’s prospective on the problem.
Thank you,
On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 6:56 AM Diane Brauner dianebrauner@live.com wrote:
I am hoping this wonderful group can brainstorm ideas for this publisher
who is actively seeking input about how to make music accessible with a
screen reader!
Here is Danielle’s question:
Hi there, I work for a publishing vendor creating content for various
education publishers. We are in the process of learning how to best prepare
educational materials on musical theory to be readable by JAWS (or a
similar screen reader). We have been researching different kinds of
software (LimeAloud, Canorus, LilyPond, MuseScore...) to try to find an
approach to tag inline musical notes so that they are readable by a screen
reader.
At this point, the only other option we can think of would be to try to
flatten all of the notes as images and write alt text for each note. This
seems like a laborious, cost prohibitive option that might not even be the
best one for the student using the text.
Given the extensive experience you have in this field, I was wondering if
you might be able to direct me to software that can be used to make musical
notes within a text accessible for the visually impaired.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate any insight you
might be able to offer.
Best regards,
Danielle
617-818-7123
Danielle.Chouhan@luminad.com
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