Date:
May 17, 2023
Role:
Accessible Designer, UX Designer
In music and computer science classrooms, Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) learners are often not given alternatives to visual technologies and materials. FiLOrk, an ensemble at the Filomen M. D’Agostino Greenberg Music School, is made up of five BVI high school learners who studied and performed computer music using the live coding language Tidal Cycles over the course of a semester.
How can collaborative live coding be made accessible to novice Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) learners? We aim to address this question through technological, curricular, and collaborative interventions.
While exploring what accessibility barriers currently exist in common tools used by laptop ensembles and live coders, our team aims to use assistive technology to provide BVI students with a more accessible classroom and to make the emerging field of live coding more accessible to a wider audience.
Although a diverse range of visual abilities, musical skills, and technical literacy were represented in FiLOrk, the size of the group is small. Moreover, all five students have known each other for a long time and had cooperated before.
We presented FiLOrk, a live coding ensemble made up of five BVI learners. Through using accessible course materials (tactile handouts) and text.management, a browser-based editor designed to work across platforms and assistive technologies, we guide our students from beginners to proficient, they are now able to create their own style of music.
As Accessible UX Designer and Website Designer, I participated in maintenance and optimization of the project website in Visual Studio Code using the Markdown language. I was independently responsible for designing tactile handouts for visually impaired students using Ai, Figma, and Braille printers to meet accessible design standards for the visually impaired students, and testing the accessibility for text.management (a browser-based editor designed to work across platforms and assistive technologies) and its compatibility with braille display and voice over.
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How can collaborative live coding be made accessible to novice BVI learners?
What accessibility barriers currently exist, and how can developers improve accessibility?
To what extent do current instructional methods support BVI learners and how can they be made more age-appropriate and accessible?
How do learners share creative ideas with code and how do they communicate during lessons and performance?
With the varieties of tools our students use, it is difficult for us to find a solution that is compatible with all devices.
In order to test for accessibility, I pushed myself to learn reading braille and using voice over to operate my laptop.
The process was hard, but thinking of my testing and findings would contribute to a better learning experience for our student made me feel motivated.
Physical handouts was created using swell form and braille printer.
Paper:
Live Coding Ensemble as Accessible Classroom
Video:
Ensemble Performance