Finale Accessible Music Plugins
Producing Talking Music and Braille Music representations from Finale

Marijke E.Van Bodengraven
FNB, The Netherlands

Introduction

The Research and Development department of Dedicon (Formerly FNB) is a small research unit within the Dutch Libraries for the blind.
Active for several years in the accessibility domain through National, European and International projects.
This involves Software Development, Standardisation activities, Accessibility Consultancy and building awareness of accessible design across Europe.

Solutions for everyone including the mainstream. Emphasis on adaptability for the mainstream rather than deterioration for the niche market.
There is no mainstream - just many niche's (44% of users use some type of Accessibility technology with their computer).
Let User Requirements be pulled from what is available rather than pushing one interfacing method on a user.
Building Accessibility into the Production chain earlier. More robust implementations will enhance overall product for everyone.

Philosophical implementation of the Design For All approach.
Requires looking at the bigger picture and seeing that Accessibility is about communication and not about blind people.
Building Accessibility at source on generic foundations.
Embracing Standards.
Facilitating reuse in order to meet several current and future sets of user needs.

Music, mathematics, content management, communication portals.
Accessible Music Production Suite; math2braille; music publishing; KennisNet.
By no means perfect, but meets our needs while still remaining adaptable and extensible.
Achieved through the design paradigms for accessibility design previously mentioned.
Restating assumptions - accessibility is communication.
Therefore design paradigms work for any design requiring communication or interfacing.

Core Idea: To provide software to automatically create Braille Music and Talking Music scores.
User Needs Addressed: Automation of a very expensive and time consuming process, resulting in a better product and service.
Key Issues Addressed: Music Modelling techniques, variable user needs, Accessible Software Design
Legacy:Adaptable software suite for music. Reusable software modules. Dissemination of formats for other music projects(MPEG, Music Network, iMaestro) http://accessmusic.sourceforge.net

Braille - very steep learning curve. Those impaired after early 20's are very unlikely to learn Braille.
Information presented serially - no opportunity to control navigation while reading the score.
Logistic issues - scores very expensive and time consuming to produce.
This results in a declining number of users and a less convenient method of production.

Designed with Design for all in mind from the outset: i.e. all musical information should be available for all situations.
Solve the problems to offer navigation and abstraction within the score.
Using a structure similar to Braille Music; Talking Music is split into fragments which are then transformed into a spoken audio description alongside a midi representation of the fragment.
The midi representation is uninterpreted, allowing the user freedom to interpret style and performance themselves.
Note pitch and duration is the core piece of information. Other information is provided around this.