Kyma Accessibility for Blind Musicians

Question

Hi all,

I am working with a blind student in my synthesis class this semester, which is leading me to examine the accessibility options for all of my computer-based synthesis environments (including Kyma).

Can I ask if anyone here has experience with using Kyma with a screen reader or other vision accessibility solutions? I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Interesting...we are working on features for the next software release that might be helpful in this context. In the meantime, the best approach might be to have your students work in pairs as "lab partners". Working in pairs would likely be beneficial for all of your students (often, two people will have complementary knowledge of the details of particular apps, or one person can be typing while the other looks things up or asks an LLM).

You might pose this same question on the Kyma Discord community (I think Jon Bellona has some experience working with BLV researchers and students, and he is active there).

Comments

You can get an invite to the Discord from the Help menu in Kyma (it's the second option down on the list).

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Thanks!

I'm not on Discord, but I'll reach out to Jon directly once I've done some initial work on my end.

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I haven't looked at accessible synthesis specific software, just some work on web audio, and basic review of DAWs, and Max for user testing.  Our research ended up going with the web audio route given accessibility with web-based formats and screen readers. Cool to see how Reaper added a screen reader script and github install repo-- but haven't read reviews or gotten user feedback (https://github.com/Timtam/rabbit/).  Apple is leaning into its VoiceOver for Logic, but this wasn't well supported during our AISL pilot study.

A lot of graphs on the science side of the team used "swell paper" (printed black ink that raises when heated) to create tactile graph surfaces. I saw how these could be made quickly and provided real synergy in team discussions. May be something to investigate for topics of signal flow or other visual heavy concepts in classroom.

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Thanks Jon!

There's lots of work to be done in this area. In my case, I needed to focus on the pragmatic aspects find a solution for this semester. In the end, we went with a Eurorack synthesizer (apologies to say that in the Kyma forums), because of the modularity and ability to do a custom setup that served the learning goals of the class.

Any kind of ready-made desktop synth didn't serve the ideas of thinking about the processes in a modular, reconfigurable way. And other modular options (Buchla, Serge, etc.) had a higher price point.

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This seems like a perfect application for a vibe coder to tackle: a desktop agent to navigate GUI software for BLV users or remote headless operation.

Traditional screen readers rely on accessibility trees (like DOM or UI Automation), but there is still a lot of graphical software, custom canvas menus, and dynamic modals that are not addressed by these models. Apparently, there are some desktop agents (like Guide or vision-based OS automation) that are beginning to bridge the gap by visually parsing screens and programmatically managing focus routing(?)

It seems like this would be a powerful tool both for the BLV community and for headless automation of GUI apps.

Do you know of anyone working in this area? Any vibe coders looking for a project that would make GUI software accessible to all?

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Unfortunately, I do not, although I can inquire at a team meeting with folks at GaTech. They may have ideas. Its seems like a great time for this type of problem-solving utilizing LLM tools and generative AI.  One of the navigation tools I found extremely interesting (although it's for spatial maps) was Brandon Biggs, Audiom and XR Navigation (https://xrnavigation.io/about/), which was in ICAD 2022.