The podcast episode features an interview with Jay Pocknell, a mixing engineer and founder of Sound Without Sight, an online hub connecting visually impaired musicians and audio professionals. He discusses inclusive design and screen reader-friendly software, and the importance of community-driven accessibility initiatives.
Transcript
Mariana: Welcome to the DARCI Podcast, the Podcast on Disability, Accessibility, and Representation in the Creative Industries. My name is Mariana López, and I’m a professor in sound production and post-production at the University of York. And we have a really exciting guest for today’s episode. We’re welcoming Jay Pocknell. Jay is a mixing engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Bristol. He’s credited on several top 10 releases, including a UK number one album. He primarily works with emerging independent artists, many of which have been selected for BBC Radio Play. Jay is partially sighted and has recently invested significant time into developing Sound Without Sight, an online community hub aimed at connecting visually impaired musicians. The project aspires to become the go-to directory for acts and solutions blind and partially sighted musicians, also providing a platform to increase representation and visibility of visually impaired talent. He’s also the Music Support Officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, RNIB, where he works to improve access to music education and industry. Jay also has experience in other areas of the music industry, including festival curation, technical coordination of events, artist development, A&R and marketing. Jay, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing?
Jay: Mariana, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about this interview. I mean, I’m doing great. It’s a lovely sunny day. How are you?
Mariana: I’m all right. Yeah, it’s very bright and sunny in York. Although I always warn listeners that we record episodes months before they’re released. So we’re recording this at the end of April. So if you’re listening to this in the middle of winter, it might not be what you’re feeling about the weather. But we’re having a nice sunny day today. Jay, let’s get started with some questions about the amazing work that you’re doing. And one of the really important things that you do is that you’re the founder and project manager of Sound Without Sight. And I was wondering, could you tell us a little bit about what the project is for those that are not familiar with it and what your role is?
Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And I think probably to answer that properly, it makes sense to give a little bit of context on my background, potentially. So I guess just to rewind into who I am a little bit. So I’m a producer and I’m a mixing and mastering engineer. And I think growing up, I always had that as my kind of dream job, if you know what I mean. I grew up around a lot of music. My parents were both musicians. They both played in bands, although, you know, not professionally, more as a kind of DIY self-expression type thing. But there were always instruments laying around the house, which I couldn’t help but have a little go on every now and then and was very intrigued into the world of sound and music. But yeah, so I kind of set that as my goal, really, just as a natural progression through life. I really wanted to double down on that. So I’m also partially sighted. So that kind of, I guess, influenced my journey through education a little bit. So I worked, so I went to uni at the Uni of Surrey, did music and sound recording, also known as the Tonmeister course. And following that, very quickly, I found myself in that role that I kind of dreamed of, working on commercial music that was getting on the radio, being released in music shops and all that kind of thing, which was great. But in terms of access, I think I came up against a few more barriers perhaps than I was expecting in that role. And I guess just muddled through as best I could, but it was always in the back of my mind. I didn’t really know where to go to get support or advice or to talk to other people who were in a similar position. So visually impaired, working in music, and I was sure there must have been some solutions that I just wasn’t aware of. And then COVID happened and that kind of kicked everyone out of the studios for a little while. So I couldn’t do the music work, which I’d become so accustomed to doing. But that also created a bit of space to think about what perhaps I could do to kind of try and connect the community and try and collate some of the solutions that I was sure must exist somewhere. So yeah, I spent a long bit of time over the pandemic trying to contact different people who I thought might have been connected to blind and partially sighted musicians. Mariana, I don’t know if you remember, but you were one of the people that I contacted and we had a phone call.
Mariana: Yeah, I think I do remember. [laughing]
Jay: Yeah, that would have been back in yeah, 2020, I imagine when I was first thinking about what I could do. And yeah, long story short, it sounded, yeah, so Sound Without Sight was the output of that. So an online platform to connect blind and partially sighted musicians and audio engineers to one another and to the support that’s available in terms of resources and opportunities as well. So in a nutshell, that is the project. So I manage it, supported by an amazing steering group that’s listed on our website under our team. We’ve got representatives from across the sight loss sector and the music industry steering what we do, but very, very much led by our community of users as well. So anyone who is a blind or partially sighted musician, or anyone at all, can sign up for an account and we run monthly meetups where we feature established blind or partially sighted musicians or people interested in audio or people from music technology design companies and showcase all the good work that they’re doing. So yeah, I wonder if there’s another question coming up that might expand on some of that stuff.
Mariana: No, I think this is absolutely amazing. And I do, I do remember and I do remember you contacting me and goodness, I hope I replied.
Jay: Yeah, we had a very fruitful phone conversation and you connected me to some great people. I think Tony Stockman being one of them.
Mariana: Oh, OK.
Jay: Who is now part of the steering group.
Mariana: Oh, that’s great. Because you know, 2020 was quite a strange year. So I’m like, you know, when you’re thinking, did I reply? Oh, God.
Jay: No, absolutely.
Mariana: Sometimes I find a lot of things in my inbox. So you know, I was thinking when you were explaining how productive you are in 2020, I was thinking, you know, I had brownies delivered to my home and you were setting up this innovative network to make the world a better place. So I hope you had some brownies as well.
Jay: Oh, definitely, definitely. Banana bread was big as well. I enjoyed the banana bread.
Mariana: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all coming back to me. This is absolutely amazing. And it’s great ‘cause you preempted my question as to how people could get engaged. But something that I was thinking while you were speaking is, Of course, you must kind of regularly talk to a lot of visually impaired musicians, engineers and others in the audio industry. And is there something that comes up or probably more than one thing? Are there things that come up as common barriers that people say they experience regularly?
Jay: Yeah, I mean, I kind of don’t want to propagate the barriers specifically too much. So what we focus on is solutions. And I guess that does kind of imply that there are barriers that need solutions. But yeah, I guess if we go over the main topics that we’ve based Soundwood Outside Around, so we’ve got a few focus areas, and those started off, there were three originally. One was access to music notation, so scores and digital notation in formats that might be suitable for blind or partially sighted musicians, so that might be braille music or modified state notation, also known as large print music. And then another category was audio production. So that encompasses everything from people wanting to record music in their bedroom, to someone who wants to work in a radio studio or a podcast studio. So yeah, recording audio and getting a professional standard. And the third of the original areas was music performance and instruments. So accessing, you know, what’s it like to be a performer on stage? Are there things that you need to consider in, you know, venues? Is there a way we can audio describe what different instruments are like for people who might not, you know, get a whole lot from looking at YouTube tutorials and things like that? And actually, over time as well, we’ve broadened out the project a little bit to add two more categories, which kind of tie all those things together. So we’ve got another one which is all around kind of music, culture and industry and the support that’s available maybe for disabled musicians or maybe for specific types of musician and trying to present all of that information in from the perspective of a blind or partially sighted community. And also, so the fifth of our five categories is inclusive design of music making products. So that might be instruments, it might be software, it might be hardware that you might use in a studio setting. And yeah, I think through all of those five categories, there are certain barriers. I think probably the notation and the products, the inclusive design stuff is probably the easiest to talk about concisely. So obviously with notation. Mainstream musicians are used to going to a music shop and buying a music book. That’s not going to be accessible to a whole range of people, but especially people who have print disabilities. You know, they might be blind, they might be partially sighted, they might be dyslexic. So we’ve been collating all the information around these alternative formats and also working with the music publishing sector to become a bit more savvy around accessible formats and how to provide them. And on the inclusive design category, so stuff around trying to collate design principles for music production software and hardware as well. So things like screen reader support within music production tools. So really showcasing where that work has been done well. So in recent years, Ableton Live, for example, they released version 12, which completely redid the kind of back end of the code. And that’s probably the best example now of screen reader friendly music production software. You also have Pro Tools and you have Logic as, you know, very mainstream recognized options that are pretty good with screen readers now. So again, we’re kind of sharing that best practice and hoping that as many blind and partially sighted musicians can access that information as possible because it’s still quite difficult, especially if you rely on a screen reader to kind of trawl the internet to find that up to date information. So that’s the thought behind our knowledge hub really is collating those solutions so that people can find them easily.
Mariana: Oh, that’s great. And kind of, this brings me really nicely to the next question. What can audio organisation studios do to be more accessible?
Jay: So studios specifically, I guess there’s a range of ways that they could support. One is, you know, when they’re purchasing new gear for people to use, making sure that they go for options that are accessible to the widest range of users possible. So it might be, you know, if they want to buy new software, doing a bit of research into the options that are the most accessible. So it might be going for, you know, on the studio computer, making sure there are programs like Ableton Live or Pro Tools or Logic or Reaper. And those are like, you know, there are different groups in audio that use all of those. So hopefully it won’t be too much of a step away from what they were planning to invest in anyway. But just making sure that they really go for those ones. And again with hardware there are specific examples now of stuff that works really well in tandem with those pieces of software, so something like the Avid S1 which controls Pro Tools, or the Softube Console 1 which gets you a more tactile kind of control surface for when you’re mixing, and that there are a few bits of hardware like that that we list on on our website that immediately take away some of those kind of barriers that producers might find otherwise.
Mariana: Thank you very much. That’s really, really interesting.
Jay: One more point to that as well. I think so music studios generally, one of the barriers that I’ve experienced and I’ve heard from a lot of the community as well is the kind progression route. The fact that a lot of junior engineers or assistants will take on that very junior role where you’re kind of helping out wherever is necessary in the studio. So you might be making tea or getting people’s lunch and then editing what’s been recorded. And that particular role, there are just barriers to some of those slightly more kind of manual tasks. So what I would say is that there has been a general move in music production, with music production tools getting a lot cheaper, that some people are able to do really amazing work from home now. And I think that move does kind of play into the hands of blind and partially sighted engineers who might struggle to express themselves in an inaccessible studio environment. So I think this kind of decentralisation of the music industry does actually set us up quite well to step into those editing roles and those recording roles that can be done remotely now.
Mariana: Well, it’s really, really interesting. And you’ve talked both about software and hardware. And I was thinking, what are the key things developers of audio software or hardware… What should they do to consider accessibility as part of their product design process? Is there anything you would recommend them doing?
Jay: I mean, the biggest thing is looking at what’s been done already and the good examples and how they’ve been done. In tandem with that goes talking to the community of your users and the people who would like to use your software but don’t feel like they can currently is doing that research when you want to design a new version and really consider accessibility from the start, because it’s quite difficult to kind of bolt it on at the end. We know that. But if you do involve the community from the start and really get their requirements, and it might be things like, you know, workflows of how to do, you know, specific common things, there might be one way that works very well with a screen reader, for example. Because I guess the there’s a difference, right between accessibility and usability. It’s something that I hear quite a lot and is totally true. There are some pieces of software where the majority of the controls are accessible in that, you know, if you’re using a screen reader, you can navigate to how to do those things. But actually, you know, it might take you 10 times as long to jump through the menu to actually be able to do that than, you know, than if you’re using a mouse. And I think there are things about how music software has been designed, which aren’t necessarily the best way of doing those things. And I think that there is just this kind of ongoing process for kind of to enable universal design, which is kind of unpicking the very visual way that a lot of music software works. Because actually, that’s probably not the best way for any user to engage with that stuff. I totally get that it can be nice to look quite flashy and kind of emulate the gear that was historically used in studios, but beyond that kind of visual flashiness, I wonder whether that is actually the most efficient way of controlling music software.
Mariana: Yeah, really, really interesting. Yeah, There’s so much, it’s quite, when one thinks about it, it’s so visual, isn’t it? To do things like editing, mixing, you know, we group things by colour. We look at measures constantly, you know, how many menus and options there are in plug-ins as well, which are all kind of, imagine if you have to go through a screen reader, it must take quite a long time to navigate through those. So it’s a really notion…
Jay: Yeah.
Mariana: … to just reconsider why it is so visual.
Jay: Yeah, and there are, you know, we’re seeing some companies now doing really good work in terms of like having shortcuts, for example, where if you’re using a screen reader, you can jump to certain elements of a plugin rather than needing to tab around the whole interface to find what you need. So SSL, for example, Solid State Logic, a lot of their plugins now, each part of the interface, you can have, I don’t know what the specific shortcuts are, but you can press ALT 3 or whatever and jump to the meters, for example. And I think for all of those elements as well that you’re talking about, there would be best practice design principles for low vision users as well. And that’s something that I don’t see talked about very much at all. And I’d love to see more conversation around that. I know Focusrite, the company that make audio interfaces primarily, they’ve done a lot of work on their control software for those, for screen reader users, but also for low vision users. And I would love to see that information really shouted about more and spread more widely across the industry. So I see, I hope that I can pay a part in that through Sound Without Sight and the whole community can, in really kind of promoting the good work so that it does get adopted more widely and try and really, yeah, create these best practice standards. And that’s something as well that we’re hoping to integrate with the MIDI Association. So they have a particular strand of work at the moment trying to do similar stuff. So how can the new version of MIDI be used to support accessibility? And some really, really great conversations happening around the self-configuration of software and hardware. So, for example, on one piece of software or hardware, you might activate a screen reader mode or a low vision mode and through MIDI 2, that would then propagate through to the other devices in your chain and they would auto configure themselves based on that. So, yeah, exciting things coming.
Mariana: Yeah, absolutely. And something that just came to mind when I was listening to you explain kind of different ways of kind of interacting with software. I remember this was a long time ago and I wouldn’t be able to tell you what audio company it was, but I remember and it had nothing to do with accessibility. I don’t think they were developing this as part of an accessibility development, but they demoed gesture control for mixing. And I quite liked the idea because I like performative things. I’d love to do a gesture and just, you know, my sound goes to surround. But also it kind of… it is a way of addressing kind of that visuality, isn’t it? Because if you’re thinking about kind of three dimensional audio, then you’re thinking about your, you know, your position at the centre and then moving those sounds without necessarily needing to see where they’re going.
Jay: Absolutely.
Mariana: Have you come across this for accessibility gesture?
Jay: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there’s so many areas where I think we can make music production less reliant on visuals. And I think, yeah, gesture control is one of those. So, yeah, a few years ago, there was the Mimu gloves came out, and they’re gloves that you can wear, and you can map them to MIDI controllers, for example. And yeah, manipulate many elements of what’s going on in your digital audio workstation using your hands. And there are similar companies trying to come out with, yeah, like sensors, almost like a theremin, but you can map to any parameter within your session. And there are things like not gesture control as such, but turning speech into MIDI controlled data. So that’s something that I’ve been involved with through the MIDI Association recently is working with the software and hardware company BetterMaker. So this was demonstrated at the NAMM show this year and Stevie Wonder had a go actually and then had great comments. So speaking to your plugin about what you want to change. So they chose an EQ plugin to demo and you could say to it set the low cut to minus four, you know, set the mid frequency to 1.5k and add two decibels and it would do that. And I think AI is starting to offer a real kind of solution there in terms of translating natural language into commands that a computer can understand and, you know, change those parameters for you based on how you might say the things you might say to a mix engineer, for example, could you please make this a bit brighter? Could you maybe this is sounding a bit dull or maybe this is a bit harsh. And yeah, using AI to translate those natural language commands into commands for the computer.
Mariana: Yeah. And it’s really interesting to hear a use of AI that feels actually useful.
Jay: Absolutely. Yeah.
Mariana: Because a lot of things that we hear, they’re a little bit like trendy things or things actually that is the opposite, you know, is taken away from the creativity of people. Whereas, you know, it’s, I personally think it’s much more important to think about what AI can do in terms of this sort of processes, where someone can then communicate through speech. And I can definitely imagine it also kind of being something used by sighted people as well. And again, it goes back to kind of universal design principles, kind of, you know, of course, there is a type of user we have in mind, but also then it gets adopted by more people, which means there’s more development and more accessibility. So that’s a really exciting example.
Jay: Absolutely. I think it’s the kind of the old thing, if you design for the edges, then the centre will take care of itself. And I think, you know, there have been some great examples of this over time, maybe Siri being one of them, which is a similar concept, but for your phone or your smart device. That’s used by so many people now, not just people with disabilities. And yeah, many, many examples like that.
Mariana: Oh, cool. Really exciting. Something I wanted to touch upon is, you told us a little bit about your university training. And I was wondering, is there something that university degrees that teach music production or audio production need to bear in mind to make sure what they teach and how they teach is accessible for visually impaired students?
Jay: Yeah, I mean, I would love for there to be a conversation around universal design principles, for example, as part of any degree that talks about music technology or technology generally. Basically, just to make the points that we’ve just spoken about, the fact that designing for for accessibility makes a product that is better for anyone. I think there are bits across the board of what we cover at Sound Without Sight that would be not just interesting, but really important for any music student to learn about, the stuff around notation. We have to shout about this stuff. Otherwise, you know, it’s that lack of knowledge across the industry can be a real barrier. If you need braille music, for example, and you’re part of an orchestra, but your conductor’s never heard of it, or the people that do the arranging for your ensemble have never provided braille music before, there needs to be a base level of understanding that these things exist, for sure. And the same with music and And I think somewhere that’d be great to check out if you’re interested in this inclusive design of audio products would be the Audio Developer Conference. I’ve been very lucky over the last couple of years to run two workshops, all related to inclusive design within music making products. So yeah, 2023 and 2024, we had a great conversation with an audience. And on the panel, we had representatives from a lot of the big audio companies. We had, for example, Avid, Softube, so many different companies. And it was a great forum to kind of really connect the audio developer community with disabled musicians as well, who could speak from their own lived experience. So yeah, do check out those recordings if you’d like to learn more.
Mariana: It’s really interesting because what you were saying, because it’s kind of those two things, making sure courses are accessible and people can succeed at their university course, but also teaching about accessibility in those courses to avoid kind of, you know, that panic factor when someone, it happens a lot in the creative industries that maybe people have never encountered a visually impaired artist and then they’re panicking because they don’t know what to do to provide accessible notation or accessible software, etc. So that education kind of helps make those courses accessible, what one would hope, but also kind of create that education into the industry, right?
Jay: Yeah, I think the fear factor you talk about is really important as well. A lot of people, whether it’s employers or educators, really feel like they need to be the expert and therefore will try and pretend like they know what someone might need. And it’s actually much more important to be open about your understanding ask people what they need. You know, for example, if you have a blind musician, they might not read braille. It’s not like a massive, massive number of blind people that do read braille, although it is super important. And I would recommend that people do explore it. Just because someone is blind, don’t automatically have all your music for your course transcribed into braille, because they might not need that. And they might actually feel a bit alienated by having all of these provisions put in place that they feel like they’re pressured to fit into. Yeah.
Mariana: Yes, just finding out what people really need and not making assumptions.
Jay: Exactly so.
Mariana: Yeah, really, really, really interesting. And kind of moving on a little bit. I mean, you’re a very busy person on top of all this work you’re also a music support officer for RNIB. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what does the role entail?
Jay: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it dovetails very, very well with what I do at Sound Without Sight. And in fact, you know, I joined that role just as we were launching Sound Without Sight. And one of the actual the driving factors behind Sound Without Sight was the fact that there were a few years where RNIB didn’t have any dedicated music support. So I was very keen to get that role once they decided they did want to employ someone again. And actually, yeah, I’ve been able to dovetail those two things very, very effectively. So RNIB generally, I assume most listeners will know something about it. It’s the biggest, I guess, the UK’s kind of premier sight loss charity. There are more than 2 million people living with sight loss in the UK as of a few years ago. RNIB predicts that actually every day, 250 people start to lose their sight. So, yeah, big, big numbers. RNIB works towards a world where blind and partially sighted people can participate equitably. So, the purpose of RNIB generally is to build the perfect country for everybody with sight loss. And where I fit in in the music team is fulfilling that mission specifically for music. So that means quite a few different things. So we support musicians directly. So we support the advice service to service inquiries from musicians who might be in education, so exploring music for the first time as a young person. It might be people wanting to transition into music related employment. It might be people who have worked in music maybe their whole lives, but now they’re starting to lose their sight and they need to find different ways of working. So we work to support the community directly. And then we use all of those insights to really influence developers and studios like we were talking about and music venues and all these areas, really. So I guess, yeah, why does RNIB do music stuff generally? Well, I think it’s our opinion in the music team that blind and partially sighted people should be at least on a level footing with their sighted peers if they choose to pursue music. I think intuitively, it makes sense that, you know, music is a very oral practice. So that the facilities and the support is in place to support blind and partially sighted people to engage with it. Music is anecdotally very popular with blind and partially sighted children and young people as well. But the reason that we’re in the job is that there are just barriers to participation as we’ve discussed already. So, yeah, what we do is we do that customer support and then we use that to, those insights to influence our kind of advocacy objectives. And we’ve got four main areas for those, one being access to music notation, one being access to music education, another being accessible design of music making equipment, and the final one being representation of blind and partially sighted people within the music industry. So, yeah, we do work across all of those. I don’t want to spend too much time on every kind of intricate aspect of what we do. But yeah, please do ask if there are specifics.
Mariana: Well, thank you very much. That’s really, really interesting. And it’s a great opportunity for me maybe to say how grateful I am to RNIB for all the support they provided us in our Enhancing Audio Description projects throughout the years. They’ve been supporting our project for very, very many years, especially through Sonali Ray. So, a really great moment to thank Sonali. But also the other day I got to meet online Sightless Kombat who gave a really, really exciting guest session for students on accessibility in gaming. So, it’s just so exciting to see what your different teams are doing to provide a kind of better experiences, more accessible experiences for blind and visually impaired people.
Jay: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Sonali and Ben’s Sightless Kombat. So up until very recently, we were actually in the same team. We were in the media and culture team.
Mariana: Oh yeah.
Jay: We’re very keen to continue working closely with those teams as well to have that kind of joined up approach moving forward with media and culture.
Mariana: Absolutely. And I imagine there’s loads of overlaps, aren’t there?
Jay: Absolutely, yeah. And I’m very, very happy to be presenting at the DARCI conference later in the year. So, yeah, hopefully we can talk a bit more about that then.
Mariana: Yes, absolutely. And you know what, we like consistency in our team. So this podcast is called DARCI, the conference is called DARCI and the module SK presented as part of it is also called DARCI. We’ve obviously run out of ideas for names, but at least you have to remember one name and you remember everything.
Jay: Yeah, it’s all good for the branding to be joined up, right?
Mariana: We just needed one logo and we didn’t need to make another. So another thing that we did that was really, really interesting, this was, oh goodness, I think a couple of years ago, we worked a lot with MySite York, that is the local charity for site loss here in York. And we did a workshop in collaboration with them. From our side it was led by my colleague Dr. Krisztián Hofstädter and we worked with the MySite York team on developing an accessible workshop for the local visually impaired community on how to create podcasts. So it was a really interesting learning process for us because with the team at MySite we went through how to make our recorders accessible, what could we do? Could we add tactile stickers here and there?
Mariana: And what sort of exercises could we create to teach audio production of podcasts in a different type of way than maybe in the past, you know, we have defaulted into, as you were talking about before, thinking about visual ways of teaching audio. And this time instead, we thought, OK, how do we teach this in an audio only way so that it’s accessible? So it’s great to kind of hear you talk about the importance of education there as well.
Jay: Yeah, and just on that point, I think, you know, we focused a lot on technical solutions. I think access solutions don’t necessarily have to be super high tech, you know, putting a piece of blue tack or a piece of tape on a mixing desk, you know, something that isn’t inherently super kind of tactile in terms of the information it gives you can open up, you know, access to blind musicians very easily and very quickly. I think we’re in an age now where we shouldn’t have to do too much of that. But for legacy products, you can make something so much easier to use by just sticking a bump on a certain button. Certainly for helping someone learn the layout of a piece of kit. I think on that specific thing, companies like Native Instruments and Softube are doing really good stuff with the devices now having a training mode where you can press a key combination. And then for, you know, until you press that again, the device is in a mode where any button you press or any rotary controller that you twist, it will read out what that thing is just to help you learn the interface of something. And that’s that’s a really cool development. And I hope to see that continue with more and more gear.
Mariana: Oh, really, really exciting. So both digital, but also kind of paper based, sticker based solutions.
Jay: Exactly so, exactly. So yeah, don’t be afraid to do whatever is needed. Yeah.
Mariana: So just moving a little bit forward, can you tell us about any exciting new projects that you’re working on?
Jay: Yeah, I think probably the biggest one right now is this work around music notation. And we’ll explore this a lot at DARCI conference in a few months, actually. But yeah, so supporting braille music through mainstream music apps. So there’s been some really, really positive developments to MuseScore Studio, which is a notation app, almost like a word processor, but for music notation. So it’s free, which is great. And within that, there’s now Braille music support, whereby you can open up a score as a sighted person or a blind person and access that music, can have a braille panel so that someone who’s sighted can can see the braille as they move through the score. And if you’re blind you can read the score on your braille display as well. Obviously you can play it back like you would in any other notation app. So really trying to level up the access to digital notation. And on top of that we’ve also been supporting through the DAISY consortium, the development of braille music translation tools. So there is again a free tool now called SMB, Sao Mai Braille, which can take a digital music XML score and transcribe it into braille, which is a great, great development that’s just happened in the last couple of years and will continue to be developed and I think further integrated into MuseScore moving forward. And just to see that, you know, braille music represented in the mainstream is great. And, you know, similar work as well in Sibelius, that notation app, to be great, to be much more screen reader compatible. So I recently did a demo with Chi Kim at Berkeley College of Music. So he is an incredible musician himself, but also, well, professor at Berkeley, but also worked on on the accessibility side of Sibelius. So, yeah, really with my RNIB hat on, pushing that access to notation side of things at the moment and excited to see that stuff roll out over the coming months and years.
Mariana: Oh, wow. Thank you very much for that. And if people want to keep up to date with how that project progresses, how can they do that?
Jay: The best way would be to sign up to the Sound Without Sight mailing list. So yeah, I mean, our website is at soundwithoutsight.org and one of the main principles behind what we want to do is really spread awareness of all the good stuff that happens, you know, whether it’s us doing it through RNIB, whether it’s Daisy Consortium, whether it’s in, you know, mainstream music technology companies, we really wanted to create one place that shouts about all the good stuff. So yeah, do check out the website and if you’d like to sign up for the newsletter and like I say, running these monthly events as well to bring the community together online. So yeah, always a good opportunity to get involved in the latest updates there.
Mariana: Well, I’m making a note to myself here in a post-it note to sign up to the newsletter. I hope people are doing the same at home. So really, really exciting stuff and loads of really great ways of kind of finding out what’s going on. The next question is a question I like to ask everyone that comes on the podcast, and it’s what are your hopes for the future of accessibility and representation in the creative industries?
Jay: I think my hopes and my mission really is to see better representation of blind musicians in the music industry. That’s something that’s very, very close to my heart. I would love to see more blind or partially sighted people working in studios or doing those kind of music production roles from home, or wherever it is they want to do them, to feel empowered to do that. To see more equipment that is just accessible out of the box. It doesn’t require the community to make scripts to make stuff accessible. Yeah, I would love to see that representation. I think we did a survey through RNIB and Opinion last year, I think it was, where we asked, I think, 1000 British music fans, whether they could think of any professional blind or partially sighted musicians. And only 3% could, and it was musicians who who had started their career in the last 10-ish years. So it’s only about 3% could. Obviously, there’s contrast massively. When you go further back in time, everyone can think of certain blind musicians. So we would love to get back on that level of representation and exposure. So yeah, that’s my mission.
Mariana: Oh, well, that’s a lovely mission to have. And it’s always really exciting to hear what everyone’s hopes are for the future ‘cause they’re always so lovely, such lovely things to reflect on. So we have reached the end of today’s episode. Huge, huge thanks for coming on the podcast today and sharing all your kind of passion and knowledge on the subject. I’ve learned a lot. This isn’t a field I know that much about, accessibility within music production, and it has been really, really enlightening. So thank you so much.
Jay: Marianna, thank you so much for having me. It’s been really, really great. Thank you.
Mariana: Thank you everyone for tuning in for today’s episode. It’s been such a pleasure to welcome Jay. And do follow up on the resources mentioned and sign up for the Sound Without Sight newsletter. We will be back next month with a brand new episode and more exciting research and practice on disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries.
Link
- https://soundwithoutsight.org