Accessibility in the Music Domain

Introduction

The literature regarding the accessibility in the music domain tends to be weighted towards print disability groups due to the challenges in reading musical notation. Within this group research has tended to focus on addressing the issues for two distinct groups: people with a vision-related disability and people with dyslexia.

Vision

Historically, much of the effort in making music accessible for people with vision-related disabilities focused on connecting music software with screen readers. In a recent study based on a large research project known as Visually impaired musicians’ lives (VIML), (Baker, 2016) the views of blind and visually impaired amateur and professional music teachers, along with music teachers that worked with visually impaired students, were asked about the core issues in using popular technologies to gain access to musical notation. The response was that the issue remains a challenge despite some promising past endeavours.

One example of a solution from the 1990s was created by producers of electronic music whereby programmers created software plug-in solutions for inaccessible music software (for notation and recording). This included the development of a bridge between the JAWS screen reader and popular notation software. However, the rate of software development in both the music notation software and assistive technology software has meant that solutions have a short shelf-life and few programs today have accessible solutions available.

With this in mind, there are currently two schools of thought relating to accessible music notation for people with a vision disability: the first is to explore new ways of delivering musical notation such as the use of audio or haptic feedback, while the second is to focus on making Braille music accessible in a digital format.

Audio and haptic solutions

One popular research approach is the use of image processing to convert musical notation into audio in real-time which is then conveyed to the musician. One approach (Genfang, Wenjun, and Qiuqiu, 2009) focused on analysing and structuring elements of musical notation and the basic algorithms of mathematical morphology. This approach essentially converts the musical notation into MIDI with the output of the musical score being recognised over 94% of the time indicating a highly accurate image to audio conversion process. The musician can then use the audio to understand the notes and tempo that need to be played.

Another approach to providing accessible music is described as ‘Spoken Music’. This is when music is presented as a series of played music fragments, each a few bars long, followed by a detailed spoken description of all the items in the music score (Crombie, et. al., 2002). The paper argues against the use of Braille music due to its lack of familiarity with younger people, the delays in getting it produced and lack of broad awareness, instead focusing on the delivery of audio fragments through the use of assistive technology plug-ins for popular music editing software such as Finale 6, with the ability to print as Braille music should a physical document still be required. The research suggests this is the best of both worlds as its primary focus is on the delivery of an audio-based musical score without the need to learn Braille music, but it is still possible to return to an older Braille format if necessary.

Another research project that was undertaken due to the challenges in creating Braille focused on the conversion of Eastern music notation into an audio-based interface (Kiriella, et. al.,2014). The research was sparked from a perception that Braille music was impractical and as such focused on trialling audio and haptic delivery mechanisms.

Braille music

In relation to the second research aspect focusing on Braille music, a research study in Brazil developed software to teach primary school students Braille music (Borges and Tomé, 2014). The idea of the software was for both sighted and blind students to participate in a shared music space leading to pedagogical advantages and stronger learning outcomes.

Two other studies focused on the use of new mark-up techniques to improve the digital access of Braille music. One example (Brown and Robinson 2004) focused on the creation of 4DHML to mark-up real-time modelling when content was inaccessible, while another research project (Encelle, et. al, 2009) proposed the creation of a Braille Music Mark-up Language (BMML). The concept of BMML is as a result of XML being widely used for musical applications, and the lack of ability for blind musicians to share their musical scores. In this instance, BMML would address this issue moving Braille music into a modern web context. A further research study (Encelle, et. al., 2006) has also focused on the use of XML to convert musical notation into Braille music to make the notation more accessible and easily shared online.

Dyslexia

The second print disability group that features in the music accessibility domain literature relates to dyslexia. Many of the characteristics of dyslexia—such as difficulties with decoding written symbols, phonemic awareness, physical coordination, and readable handwriting—may adversely affect music learning (Nelson and Hourigan, 2016). One research study focused on examining the perceptions of five professional musicians with dyslexia as they reflected on their experiences learning music. Recommendations from the study included support for multisensory teaching, isolating musical components, learning of jazz and popular music, using technology, and small group instruction (Nelson and Hourigan, 2016).

Another study focused on the use of an iPad tablet computer and a musical notation app to help students with Dyslexia as a multi-sensory instructional tool (Witmer, 2015). The study concluded that the use of the tablet for guided practice in conjunction with instruction was significantly more effective at increasing the ability of students to recognize musical staff notation than traditional learning approaches.

Issues across print disability groups

While the approaches to making music accessible vary in approach, there are some common issues shared between disability groups. The two recurring themes are that the technology moves faster than solutions can be found to support it, and that education professionals lack the training and awareness to provide students with print disabilities the solutions they need. (Baker, 2016) (Knight and Lagasse, 2012)). This has been particularly highlighted when music teachers themselves have a print disability as there is a perceived inability to employ such teachers regardless of their musical and teaching ability due to an inability for the educational institution to support their delivery of teaching to students. (Parker and Draves, 2017).

Considerations for solutions in domain-specific areas

While there are a number of different approaches in terms of the technologies used to address accessibility issues in the music domain, there are a broad set of considerations raised in one research study that are applicable to both this domain and other domain-related accessibility pursuits.

The list of considerations (Power and Jürgensen, 2018) have been identified as follows:

• Interface requirements should be generalised and not dependent on specific applications so that identified benefits can be used broadly;
• Multi-modal interfaces must be brought to mainstream applications;
• Awareness of universal access must be increased; and
• Involvement of the target user group must be included at all levels of design.