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kristen Offline OP
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A woman I know who is blind is looking for ways to record. When she was married her husband helped her with her recordings, where she used a mac computer and protools. She is trying to find ways to help her record either with her current system , or find some other way to record tracks. She asked if there was any "audio recognition" software that could help her record with a DAW. I told her didn't know but will try and help her find an answer.

Does anyone have any ideas or know of any equipment that can help her to record herself when there is no-one else around to help her?

thanks
superkristen


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Perhaps she could try a hardware controller?
Of course this would involve some costs and a learning-curve, but she would be able to operate the DAW on a sense of feeling. Once she knows her way around the controller she could use any DAW she likes.

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Many DAW softwares have a load of keyboard shortcuts. That could help but probably isn't the final solution.

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i asked my veteran's administration therapist for any digital speech processing (DSP) software and she presented a catalog the size of the new york city phone directory.
she may already associated with organizations for the blind that help the blind for free.
give a quick phone call to 'diabled american veterans' which is separate from the va. she likely don't qualify for a grant but they can steer her/you in the right direction.
i did usability studies for microsoft and i know that they develop software for most physical disabilities. however, its best to work with the federally funded blind organizations which are dedicated to the purpose. they may have a program that will provide both hardware and software for free. also check with your county and state handicap agencies. btw, she is eligible for free mail on anything like music, braille literature, books on tape, recordings, etc. ask your local postmaster.

i was going to recommend rock star not cuz he helped me on dsp issues.

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Quote:

A woman I know who is blind is looking for ways to record.




There is a screenreader program for the sight-impaired called, "JAWS".

There are many sight impaired people using JAWS with various DAW softwares.

As a matter of fact, this year's beta testing included user "ptorpey" who is trying to get Peter and the gang to make BiaB and PGMusic programs more JAWS-friendly. It is a work in progress at this point, as some of the things inside the programs don't use text in the fashion that the screen-reader program needs to see and thus can't read it to the sight impaired person via speech generator and soundcard.

If you send a PM to ptorpey I'm sure you can get all kinds of info on what DAW programs people are using with JAWS with the least amount of problems right now.

And do a websearch for "JAWS" screenreader, check out their website. If she's sight impaired and has a computer, I'm surprised if she doesn't know about JAWS, actually.


--Mac

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Thank you all.

and Mac, I sent a pm to "ptorpey" about this.

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Quote:

Quote:

A woman I know who is blind is looking for ways to record.




(quote) There is a screenreader program for the sight-impaired called, "JAWS". (quote)

Thanks, Mac, for pointing this person in my direction.

Although I did reply to the posted PM, I'll copy a bit of my reply here for others who might search the public forum at some later date.

--


I (and lots of other blind musicians) use Cakewalk's Sonar to do audio recording and editing. Using the screen reader JAWS for Windows, Sonar has been made quite accessible for the blind with the JAWS scripts that have been developed over the years for Sonar in conjunction with the developers at Cakewalk.

Here are a list of references which you might find helpful:

1. midimag@midimag.org is a mailing list for audio musicians who are blind. I have found this DL quite useful in terms of getting suggestions, etc. from other blind musicians. You might want to subscribe to this mailing list.

2. www.jsonar.org - This is a web site where you can download (free) JAWS scripts for use with any version of Sonar to make Sonar more accessible.

3. www.freedomscientific.com - Freedom Scientific is the company which distributes JAWS for Windows. This is a program which runs on Windows and makes the PC accessible via synthesized speech and/or braille. You can also download a free 40-minute timed demo.

--Pete

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