By Eshaan Sood; Edited by Oshin
Hello, your wandering troubadour Eshaan here. If you read my last piece on the five reasons one should use a DAW, maybe for a second you might have wondered how on earth does all of this work? As some of you may already know, I am completely blind and if you didn’t, well now you do. When I first went blind almost ten years ago, the world of accessible music technology was very different. There is a company called Dancing Dots that made a program called CakeTalking for Sonar, a DAW (now discontinued) for Windows that was also made available via BandLab for mac users. Apple’s Logic Pro and GarageBand were also fairly accessible at the time. However, in this last decade, a lot has happened.
I personally am a mac user and had been well before I went blind so all the experiences I present here are solely based on my experience while using a mac, just thought I would put that out here.
First Things First
So, Apple’s own Logic Pro and GarageBand are almost fully accessible using a screen reader. A screen reader is a software blind users employ to have a voice read back the elements on a screen. This software is always on for blind people. It helps us do everything, from writing an article like this one, to checking our email, to using a DAW. Apple’s in-built screen reader called ‘VoiceOver’ works almost seamlessly with Logic Pro and GarageBand. If you’ve caught my two uses of the word here, that’s because some elements still do not translate well. However, from what was possible ten years ago to what is possible now, there is a world of difference.
Logic Pro is good enough at this point; if I plug in a pair of earphones to listen to my screen reader now, I can run a session for someone without them suspecting that a blind person might be running the session. The same goes for running a session for myself of course. The big problem has extended from ‘How do I get 8 tracks to record simultaneously’ to ‘How do I hit record and jump over the maze of cables that make up my bedroom studio?’
What about Mixing Though?
Well, when I say all of Logic is accessible, I mean all of it. All the in-built plugins are completely accessible. Over the years, many updates to both Logic and third-party companies have also made their plugins completely accessible. There are companies that are industry-standard and completely cater to blind users. Companies, such as Waves, Soundtoys, Valhalla, Eventide, Native Instruments, and Arturia are all companies where I have tested at least one product, if not more, and they all work. A fair warning; If you are a blind reader getting excited though, sometimes the way these plugins are laid out can be very overwhelming because they are designed to be absorbed visually. They still are accessible and sometimes may have a knob labeled with an abbreviation. The way I deal with these kinds of issues is usually by watching a youtube tutorial of someone using that plugin and it usually answers what a certain knob is supposed to do.
However, one of the biggest players in the modern audio game, Universal Audio, still has made no moves to make their products accessible to blind users.
Native Instruments: Komplete Kontrol System
Sometime last year I discovered the Native Instruments: Komplete Kontrol System. Komplete Kontrol can be thought of as a launcher. The same way you have a launcher for apps on your phone, Komplete Kontrol is a launcher for virtual instruments and plugins. If you own a NI Komplete Kontrol Keyboard, you can control all of this launcher from your midi keyboard. And you know what, they have put in a lot of effort into adding an accessibility mode into the keyboard itself.
So while you browse through Komplete Kontrol, you have a screen reader-like response that tells you what is up on the screen. The knobs on the keyboard are also responsive to touch. So when you hold the knob, it speaks out loud what parameter of the instrument or plugin it is mapped to before you twist it, and then it tells you where it is set. A lot of third party companies have made their products NKS ready, which is to say that they work with Komplete Kontrol. Industry-leading companies like Spitfire Audio, Waves, Soundtoys, East West Sounds, Output, and many others have made their products NKS ready and in the bargain, made them usable by blind people.
Wishes for the Future
While I cannot complain at all about the direction technology is heading in, there are still aspects of music technology that are inaccessible. I understand that blind music producers and musicians are a very very small segment of the market, but when you make design choices that are accessible, they not only add a whole new user base but also make the experience for sighted users much better. If you have ever read an audiobook, that “technology” was first made for blind people. If you have seen a curb cut, the small ramps on road crossings, that is a mixture of making sidewalks accessible to both blind people and people on wheelchairs. That said, a blind user has everything they truly need to create professional-quality recordings independently in 2024.
I couldn’t be more excited about the continuous advancements in technology that will make this process even easier in the years to come!