About the SurfaceReader project
The SurfaceReader project is intended to improve the accessibility of audio and midi software to blind and partially sighted people. The project aims to develop a software package that announces control surface information as it changes in the context of the audio application being used.
What is a control surface?
A control surface is a device that allows the user to control some features of a music-related software application in a way more familiar to musicians, typically by providing faders, knobs and buttons to enable easy parameter control in real-time.
History
The idea for this project came out of the work done by Kurzweil Music Systems, who implemented a technique for outputting the display contents of their K2000, K2500 and K2600 instruments over MIDI.
This led to the Kurzweil Display Reader program from KeySounds. Investigation showed that some other devices also provided similar mechanisms for setting/querying their display hardware, with the Mackie Control Universal protocol being the most widely-used standard for control surfaces.
SurfaceReader has evolved out of its predecessor, the Mackie Display Reader, which was developed as a reasonably sophisticated proof of concept in order to test the usefulness of such an application.
The initial offering only supported Mackie Control Universal units and compatible clone devices and the speech feedback was optimised to reflect how these devices interacted with Cakewalk's Sonar digital audio workstation application. No support was provided for Mackie Control Extender units (which add more faders to the system) and the application could only be configured for use with one control surface device at a time.
Similarly, there was no support for any of the related control surface protocols, such as Logic Control or HUI, which are used by other applications of musical interest.
Finally, the Mackie Display Reader would only run under Windows - a severe limitation when a high proportion of educational and professional work is based around the Apple Mac operating system.
SurfaceReader V1.
Thanks to the kind generosity of the Elizabeth Eagle-Bott Memorial Fund, development work was undertaken to address the limitations of the Mackie Display Reader. Since The new version attempts to be much more generic, its name was changed to SurfaceReader.
Features
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Provides support for multiple control surfaces using a variety of protocols.
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Allows the user to customise the speech feedback on a per-application basis (for example, the application can be customised to speak differently for Sonar, Reaper, etc.).
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Available for use on both Windows and Mac platforms.
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Available as a free download from the Raised Bar website.
Current Status
SurfaceReader is now being used by a number of people to perform useful work under Windows, though work continues to fix issues that appear as users get further into the more advanced capabilities of the application. A new release of the Mac version is imminent and will also contain all of the fixes that are in-hand for the next Windows update.
Further information
For further information about the project, or to subscribe to the user's support email list, please visit the Raised Bar website, email Tim Burgess at tim@raisedbar.net or telephone 01827 719822.