Yep, the best rabble-rousing I can do if Stakeholders, PMs and the like aren’t super into it is to contact any UX team and ask if they’d be interested in taking any shared class on accessibility first development. And if not, ping them all by Dec
December 3 is the “International Day of Persons with Disabilities,” a day of observance for people who live with some form of disability, proclaimed by the United Nations in 1992. All people should be valued for their unique talents and abilities.
Would help with any future refactoring since one of the main complaints about changing code is the burden of having to rewrite with that in mind. And would help justify costs and effort by also offering passive benefits to any clients that may lack (obvious) disability.
It’s not callousness, I do think nudges can go in the right direction.
I meant justified from a cost/benefit stand point of a company that has to produce a product and sell it successfully in the marketplace - not justified morally.
When my eyes started going - just the normal deterioration from hitting 40 - I became really frightened by the possibility of loosing my vision entirely - I work in VFX, there is really no way that I would be able to retain any position in this industry if I had very poor vision (not quite sure what the levels are for sighted, legally blind etc). It’s not something I’m casual about.
There is a difference I think between providing access in public spaces etc and obligating instrument manufacturers to make, in many cases, extreme design choices to provide better access to a comparatively small number of people.
When I moved to Toronto I was genuinely shocked that the lack of accessibility throughout most of the city - all the bars/restaurants have down often steep and very narrow stairs!
newer places will have main level facilities but those are few and far between.
There’s a different legal burden certainly in what is a public good, but it’s always valid to ask how persons engage with accessibility and how instrument makers can work on their own creativity!
I’m all for everyone trying to experience the world and experiences of others differently, I doubt there’s nothing to learn from those thought experiments.
( speaking here of hardware not necessarily software)
But oftentimes small inexpensive changes would give access to others that could make adaptation. I don’t think it is unreasonable that the actual adaptations are expensive, but you need to have the hooks to make those changes.
Plus there is no one need, so adaptations may often be very individual.
As someone with only one fully-working hand, accessibility is becoming increasingly important as I get older. I’ve been having hand and wrist problems lately on top of my other lifelong issues, and the new ones may or may not be treatable. I worry very frequently that I won’t be able to continue using my gear - especially if, gods forbid, something happens to my one good hand. Even small things, like the knobs on my Pro-3 and Take 5 being quite stiff, begin to irk me. If I had weaker hands or if my wrists stiffen up I might not be able to use them at all.
One of the greatest gifts I can imagine is for those with physical impairment to somehow have access to making music as well.
I also feel that as augmentation becomes more of a thing… those of us without impairment will want to use those certain specialty devices too, such as a device that would allow us manifest live audio by simply imagining it into existence.
The crazy thing about companies across all industries and types of products not taking accessibility into consideration is that time and time again it is proven that accessibility features end up being helpful for everyone, not just disabled folks. If you live in the US and appreciate curb cutouts, you can thank the ADA for forcing sidewalks to be wheelchair compatible. In technology, accessibility tools are usually some of the most useful things for power users who want to modify their system to meet their use case. MacOS, for example, exposes a lot of desktop and window controls as an accessibility feature, and many “power user” tools for window management actually leverage those accessibility features under the hood. So it’s really not about serving a small percentage of users – it’s actually about just empowering users to configure the device to how they want to use it.
Not to mention of course the help that these kinds of features provide to disabled people – that should be a reason enough to implement these kinds of things – but it’s an added benefit of accessibility that I see so few companies acknowledge and prioritize.
My arthritis is getting to the point where I might begin to consider myself disabled to some degree. I’ve already sold a few bits of gear because I found it difficult to use them. I have zero expectations of manufacturers to consider my oncoming disability in their designs, even though it would likely be quite easy to accommodate.
Inclusive design can only achieve so much and will still exclude a significant number. The answer often lies in bespoke solutions. It’s not like every blind person wants to use an Octatrack, but it’s not impossible to create a bespoke solution for controlling the octatrack, for example. It just needs to be paid for.
The core idea of disability benefit in the UK is that it enables disabled people to lead as full a life as possible and it is this that should be the guiding principle. Rather than putting the onus on designers and manufacturers, disabled people should be empowered to create their own bespoke life infrastructure, which can include adaptations or bespoke solutions to assist leisure or creative pursuits.
Of course this requires the relevant political will to properly fund the disabity benefit system and for society as a whole to start to see inclusivity and accessibility as the norm.
this is something that has real world potential - there are already a (limited) range of tools to assist people in this position - I’m thinking of those can openers for people with arthritis etc
I can see real potential in a tool that would help people more easily grab knobs etc
this would be something that might have a wider use than just synths
what manufactures could VERY easily do is standardize the knobs to better accommodate that kind of tool - they’d still have options in terms of size etc - but there would be elements that had accessibility tools in mind.
There’s so many potential solutions, but no one size fits all. At a certain point, the only answer to the question of accessibility is to give disabled people the money to pay for solutions themselves.
There’s plenty of companies out there that could provide solutions and meet the demand that this would generate. There just isn’t the will to do it, politically.
Oh wow, I hadn’t ever heard of Yaeltex before. I only have very vague DIY kit experience and none in product design but I’d love to help tackle something like this.
