[RWP] Fw: [midi-mag] Accessibility Campaign

[Roy Shtupler]

www.soundclick.com/tzackeek
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Maik Brodnicki" <maik at brodnicki.biz>
To: <midimag at midimag.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 7:01 PM
Subject: [midi-mag] Accessibility Campaign


Dear Music and Midi Fans,

I am writing to you from a German sonar list in order to draw your attention 
to a campaign that you might be interested in.

If you would like to contact us, please sign up at blindsonar at ml4free.de.

Some time ago, we had launched a mailing campaign in which we informed 
manufacturers of our problem of not being able to use many of the plugins. 
Unfortunately, the result of the campaign was rather poor.

This was obviously because only one e-mail was sent, making it impossible to 
ascertain how many people are actually interested in this subject. Thus, we 
thought of compiling a list of plugins that we are interested in and whose 
manufacturers we could write to. If everyone were to write a personal 
e-mail, the manufacturers would see how many there are who would like to 
have accessible plugins. Spectrasonics, for example, mentioned that they are 
planning to make Omnisphere accessible in a future update. Now we are 
looking for others who would like to join us in order to increase the 
chances of getting accessible plugins. I would greatly appreciate your 
participation in the campaign. Since the introduction of Voiceover, the high 
level of awareness to this screenreader and to the term "accessibility" 
among manufacturers has greatly increased our chances. Further below, you 
will find a list of manufacturers along with their support e-mail addresses 
or the forum thread under which you can contact them.

You will also find a standard text (separated from the other text with an 
asterisk) that you can send to the support teams as it is.

Please also post other manufacturers with e-mail addresses in your or our 
blind sonar list and write letters to these, too.


Perhaps you could also distribute this text in other mailing lists.

And do not forget: the more people participate, the greater the probability 
that we will soon have a number of barrier-free plugins to work with.



And here is the standard text. It is written in such a way that Mac and 
Windows users alike can use it.

Of course you can simply use the same text, though it might be better to use 
a slightly different wording.



*

Dear * Support Team,

I am interested in ** and have a question concerning the plugin. As I am 
blind, I need to use aids like screenreaders. Efficient solutions are 
available both for Windows and for Mac. You might have heard of Voiceover, 
the integrated screenreader of Mac. Have your plugins been programmed as 
barrier-free? This would be important for me to use them. For the 
screenreader to be able to read the information, the plugin must contain 
standard elements in Windows or the cocoa framework in Mac.

Apple has published documentation for manufacturers that shows the 
requirements that need to be fulfilled to make a program barrier-free.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Accessibility/Conceptual/AccessibilityMacOSX/OSXAXIntro/OSXAXintro.html

And here for Windows:

http://www.microsoft.com/germany/msdn/aktuell/news/show.mspx?id=msdn_de_43594

If this is not the case, my next question would be whether anything in this 
line is planned for a future update?

Looking forward to you reply.

Yours sincerely, *



Here is a list of manufacturers in which we are interested.

Here is the list of manufacturers.

Some of the products that are interesting for us.

1.

Product: Logic Pro

Manufacturer: Apple

E-mail: accessibility at apple.com

Please dont send the documentation to Apple.

2.

Product: Omnisphere

Manufacturer: Spectrasonics

E-mail: info at spectrasonics.net

Be sure to write to this company - an update is as good as promised!

3.

Product: Motu BPM (groove plugin with huge library)

Manufacturer: Motu

E-mail: sales at motu.com

The page mentioned something about accessibility. However, I have not been 
able to find out what that means.

4.

Product: Blue, Predator, etc.

Manufacturer: Rob Papen

E-mail: info at robpapen.com

A genuine synthesizer genius

5.

Product: Nexus, Quadrasid

Manufacturer: REFX www.refx.com

Registration is necessary in order to get a ticket. However, the 
registration is very fast. By the way: Quadrasid emulates a C64 and sounds 
superb.

6.

Product: Bidule, Chipsounds

Manufacturer: Plogue www.plogue.com

Bidule is a modular DAW, and Chipsounds is a chip emulator that emulates the 
sounds of the old Nintendo, Amiga, and Atari.

The manufacturer told us that they would look into the matter if they 
received a sufficient number of requests.

The accessibility thread can be found here:

http://plogue.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5637
As I said, if you post your favorite VSTs, I will write to their support 
teams, too.

Two or three sentences would be sufficient.

7.

Product: Valhallaroom

Manufacturer: Valhalla DSP

E-mail: sean at valhalladsp.com

A hall plugin programming genius

8.

Product: Kontakt, etc.

Manufacturer: Native Instruments

Link to the contact form:

http://co.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=infosuppform

9.

Product: Vienna Libraries

Manufacturer: VSL

E-mail: support at vsl.co.at

Arguably the best manufacturer for orchestra instruments.

10.

Product: Independence

Manufacturer: Yellow Tools

E-mail: support at yellowtools.com

11.

Product: Wavelab 7, Halion, and Cubase

Manufacturer: Steinberg

E-mail: info at steinberg.net



Yours sincerely,



Maik

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