Accessible Music

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Welcome to the user site for the AccessMusic project. The AccessMusic project provides a set of tools for creating accessible music which are freely available to download. These tools allow you to convert music scores from traditional western music notation to formats for the Blind and visually impaired. Currently the project provides software plugins which convert from Finale Music to Braille Music and Talking Music formats, together with Braille and Talking Music interfaces that can be coupled onto any editor.

Development site: www.sourceforge.net/projects/accessmusic

AccessMusic was designed following the meta-modelling principles found within the MPEG family, with particular attention paid to compatibility with emerging infrastructures. This means that the software can be easily adapted to provide an integrated decoder. A brief description of what is required for this process is given below.

Braille Music conversion takes place based on the International Manual of Braille Music Notation, but due to the ever-changing requirements of this format the user preferencing elements must remain extensible. Talking Music provides a spoken description of the elements of the score. These spoken descriptions are provided in such a way that the information is compressed as much as possible to ensure the spoken elements provide usable information and the descriptions do not become unwieldy. The format has proved very popular with print impaired users, who in the past have either had no access to scores or have had to contend with the logistic problems of traditional production methods associated with Braille Music. Talking Music has therefore become valuable to many users as both a learning tool for music and also as a means of navigating through all the elements found in a traditional score.


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Software licensed under the GNU General Public Licence.

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