Born-Accessible Music Publishing: Enabling the Creation of Accessible Digital Scores
The DAISY Music Braille Project identified the need to develop and promote a ‘born-accessible’ agenda in the mainstream music publishing industry, to help get scores to musicians with print-disabilities in suitable formats.
Music scores are typically only published in print, and sometimes made available as PDF, but neither of these formats are accessible to many musicians, and usually require many hours of skilled transcription to convert into braille or Modified Stave Notation.
Our earlier project work secured the building blocks for this agenda: improving the music file format standard MusicXML with W3C; improving the accessibility of mainstream music notation tools and the MusicXML they export; developing Engraving Guidelines for creating ‘born-accessible’ scores in music notation tools; and supporting the development of conversion tools.
All these strategic interventions ensured that well-engraved MusicXML scores can now be easily and effectively presented in braille and modified stave notation, and for reading in notation tools and apps with screen access technologies.
After hosting two Round Table events on accessible music publishing, DAISY and RNIB set up an ‘Accessible Music Publishing Action Group’ to support publishers in developing policy and practice in making their scores accessible to musicians with print-disabilities.
This small working group of mainstream music publishers, engravers, and producers of accessible format scores is collaborating to find ways of creating and distributing MusicXML scores which are accessible for blind and other print-disabled musicians, which can be quickly and effectively read in their preferred reading format.
After working with DAISY and RNIB, and through discussions at AMPAG, we’re delighted to congratulate ChoirCommunity on being the first music publisher to launch their accessible digital music publishing service for customers with print-disabilities, by following DAISY’s Engraving Guidelines and our ‘born accessible’ agenda.
The music publishers currently involved in AMPAG include: ABRSM, ChoirCommunity, Edition Peters, Hal Leonard, Multitude of Voyces, OUP, Routledge, Schott Music, and Taylor & Francis.
Read more about DAISY’s work around accessible music publishing.