Hello all,
I decided to start this thread regarding the new Ketron Audya and accessibility for the blind and visually impaired musicians.
A few comments about this has already been posted by AJ in the following thread: http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum37/HTML/018976.html
I have a few comments and hopefully some more people will join this thread.
If you are going to make the buttons beep, it would be nice if there were two sounds, one for activating a feature and another one for deactivation. For example, it could be a lower sound for deactivating.
In menus, it would be nice if they don't wrap back to the top when reaching the bottom. Or if they do, there could be some other sound that would indicate that the menu has been wrapped to the top.
When it comes to speech, it would be nice if the speech could read other options and not just the menu. It would be very cool if it would work in the sequencer, sampler and the harddisk recorder.
For a new user, a training mode option would be great. You press a button and the speech will tell you what the buttons are for so that the user can get familiar with all buttons on the instrument.
Well, that's all for now, but I think I will have some more comments and questions in the near future.
Thanks Ketron for being interested in making the Audya accessible and I hope you will do it!

It seems as if to start with a simple easy to use PC editor for the Audia could be one of the more cost effective ways for Ketron to go in this area.
The editor would not just be for blind individuals but for everyone who has the Audia. The editor could be use to make third party audio loops playable in styles on the Audio, could be used for style creation, could be used for registration set-up, loading and saving files and folders on the Audia and probably other things.

Since the Audia can connect to the computer by USB all of this should be possible.
Regarding orientation to the button and phisical lay-out of the Audia, a part of the editor could show a vertual view of the phisical Audia and a user can click on a button, slider or knob and get a discription of where that control is and what is it used for. A blind individual could probably use the computer arrow keys to get to the different controls on the vertual Audia displayed on the computer screen. When on a control, they could exicute a computer command like [control + D] and get a discription of where that control is on the audia and what it is used for.
I wonder if software editors are things that keyboard manufacturers are still doing?

I agree to all mentioned above, especially the pc editor item.

Since speech will need to be generated and routed to a specific port (Headphones most likely), that will take some specific system design and acquisition of a text to speech synthesis or mp3 (or other format) file of each option. Then again the sound file would be cumbersome too to where one would need to be created for each entry in each area of a board like this.

Editing from the computer is most easiest where we could just tweek our settings on a voice or style; save it off to a library and access it. As long as it is saved in a logical order (and we would normally do this on any board), we could get by with the majority of items Christian had listed. Menus can't wrap. There has to be a way to stop from going around in circles on any board. That's why Tyros is known to be best for us since there's a stopping point and a start point and each time you go to that screen you know where you are at any given time.

Buttons and controls are the most escential point here. If there are only generic style groups or voice groups, then the screen which would come up should have a logical list of sub-categories again with a start and end point to each screen

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Vince Mistretta