KVR Audio

Tzarls · Post by **Tzarls** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 8:07 pm

Hello. Are there any visual impaired music producers around here? I need some help from you.

Let me explain:

For the past 10 year's I've been working teaching Sequencing in a local Institute here in my country, Perú. We use Cubase as our main software. This semester we have a student who has very bad vision. He can find his way around places, but when it come to interacting with the computer he is practically blind. He doesn't use the computer very much and has a very hard time trying to recognize icons, type using the keyboard... you get the idea. We need to make some adaptations for him, starting with the size and resolution of our screens and activating the accesibility options in Windows (the OS we use). Can you give me some advise onthis subject? Like any software or hardware we can use to make him easier to use the software? He wants to learn, it's just that the standard equipment and procedures are useless for him.

Thank you guys.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 8:09 pm

moving this to hosts for now, thought about getting started too but I think it might get more attention in hosts...leaving a shadow behind

Tzarls · Post by **Tzarls** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 9:31 pm

Thank you!

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 10:13 pm

For what it's worth, 10 or 15 years ago it was Sonar (now BandLab and free) that had the best support for visually impaired. Good integration with the Jaws screen reader software, and completely operatable with keystrokes. No mouse needed.

antic604 · Post by **antic604** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 10:22 pm

"Windows" & "+" keys enable magnifying option and depending on the settings it zooms the whole screen or where the mouse coursor is. With Cubase you're basically out of luck, because it doesn't have native GUI zoom and it doesn't adapt very well to Windows scaling factors.

Tzarls · Post by **Tzarls** » Thu Mar 12, 2020 11:08 pm

antic604 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 10:22 pm "Windows" & "+" keys enable magnifying option and depending on the settings it zooms the whole screen or where the mouse coursor is. With Cubase you're basically out of luck, because it doesn't have native GUI zoom and it doesn't adapt very well to Windows scaling factors.

Yes, I tried that with him during the first session. It didn't work so well but I guess that's just part of the learning curve for him and us.

antic604 · Post by **antic604** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:34 am

Tzarls wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 11:08 pm
antic604 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 10:22 pm "Windows" & "+" keys enable magnifying option and depending on the settings it zooms the whole screen or where the mouse coursor is. With Cubase you're basically out of luck, because it doesn't have native GUI zoom and it doesn't adapt very well to Windows scaling factors.
Yes, I tried that with him during the first session. It didn't work so well but I guess that's just part of the learning curve for him and us.

Yeah, that's not very convenient indeed. If possible, you could do it the other way around - provide him with big, but low-res (meaning not 4K, but say Full-HD) sceen, for example a 40'' TV (instead of standard 20''-something computer screen) - this way he won't have to use the magnifying glass & GUI elements will just naturally be 2x bigger.

THE INTRANCER · Post by **THE INTRANCER** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 11:31 am

Even though this piece of software is over 20 years old now, I still class it as one of the best pieces of music software ever made. For someone with sight problems, it's hard to beat if you excuse the pun, with everything being big bold and clear. Not only that, you can make music without ever taking your hands off the controller. Which also means that the movements you make with your fingers can be more easily memorized like playing a game. You can make amazing music with this software as well as produce visual effects to go along with it. It's easy to learn and very quick in the process of creating music. 24 Track Sequencer and 22khz sound quality from the included samples. Back in the year 2000 I still made music with it, and that was even after a steaming night out on the town... and having a PC with a load of music software on it.. It was just as much fun for adults to use as it was for kids and even some big name DJ's used it back then. So grab an old Playstation dirt cheap and a copy of this.. and he'll be all set.

https://youtu.be/Dk9w0o1TvBo

Kinh · Post by **Kinh** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 11:43 am

I have poor vision and I use a large monitor. My daw is Ableton which allows me to increase the size of the font. When I thought I was gonna lose my vision all together I looked at the midi controllers like like Akai Advanced and NI Kontrol, along with Maschine. The problem with all of these is you have to look at the display on their screens which are all small, same with Push. It really depends on how he's visually impaired. Does he see darkness or blur? With me it's blur. The only way around this is bigger monitors, higher resolution, bigger text and familiarization with where everything is the the daw, ie; location markers, control knobs, reading the names of the presets and everything isn't really that important.

AdvancedFollower · Post by **AdvancedFollower** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 5:24 pm

I have 20/130-ish vision and I'm sensitive to light.

I use a 27", 1920x1080 monitor (large screen, low resolution). That way I don't really have any problems even with older plugins with smaller GUIs. Obviously bigger, resizable GUIs are better. I don't need to use the Windows magnification feature with this setup.

I use a VESA gas lift arm similar to this one: https://products.multibrackets.com/en/d ... ngle-white
This lets me easily adjust the viewing distance depending on what's currently required, without getting "vulture neck". Obviously sitting close to the screen for extended periods is very tiring, but sometimes I need to move the screen closer when doing fine waveform editing, moving MIDI notes etc. It's the single most useful aid for me.

I prefer higher contrast, darker visual themes. Especially when you sit close to the screen, bright/white visual themes can be tiring to look at.

Tzarls · Post by **Tzarls** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 7:47 pm

Great guys, thanks for your input... I don't know if I'll be able to do the PlayStation approach though.

This guy I believe sees blur. We'll try with a bigger monitor and lower resolution. Thanks and keep the ideas coming!

Davidson A & M · Post by **Davidson A & M** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 3:35 am

https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-v ... en-readers
https://sourceforge.net/projects/midibraille/
http://www.music4vip.eu/braille_music_reader
Hope this helps seems like a lot of options.

HTT · Post by **HTT** » Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:32 pm

Tzarls wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 8:07 pm Hello. Are there any visual impaired music producers around here? I need some help from you.

Let me explain:

For the past 10 year's I've been working teaching Sequencing in a local Institute here in my country, Perú. We use Cubase as our main software. This semester we have a student who has very bad vision. He can find his way around places, but when it come to interacting with the computer he is practically blind. He doesn't use the computer very much and has a very hard time trying to recognize icons, type using the keyboard... you get the idea. We need to make some adaptations for him, starting with the size and resolution of our screens and activating the accesibility options in Windows (the OS we use). Can you give me some advise onthis subject? Like any software or hardware we can use to make him easier to use the software? He wants to learn, it's just that the standard equipment and procedures are useless for him.

Thank you guys.

I have poor vision and find that Ableton (and Logic-but that is Mac-only) are quite scalable. This makes things much easier to see and do. I hope this helps.

Visual impaired music producers