Unofficial screen reader support in Ableton Move may be new, but it’s already a revelation. Andre Louis, a visually impaired musician and technologist/artist extraordinaire, takes us on a tour of Move Everything. That’s must-watch material, I hope, for sighted users and developers, too, to understand how these features work for visually impaired users.
Here’s the video, with Andre’s concise and lucid explanations, as always, covering Move, the ability to support screen readers even with standalone Move, and some of the other cool features of Move Everything:
(Tubular Bells for all!)
Here’s Andre’s description:
When Ableton Move launched with a web-based screen-reader, it was (and is) fantastic. It gives us access to most features of the Move. What it doesn’t do however, is allow us to be as untethered from our other devices as our sighted counterparts.
Welcome Move Everything, a third-party add-on for your Move that brings the screen-reader directly onto your device, amongst many other features. In this video I demonstrate how you reach the screen-reader functions, and create a short track using a third-party sound from Move Everything. I also show the ‘Quantize Sampler’ which is another part of the Move Everything Software which puts your recording into a dedicated folder. This allows you to bring it back onto another track, or use it as an audio clip or anything else you might wish to do.
Via Mastodon, which has a lot of terrific discussion on the topic (and robust accessibility features on the platform itself):
It’s been amazing to witness this unfold. Almost immediately, musicians with visual impairments were out there using Move once they got their hands on the features. I think removing obstacles to access should be a priority, independent of how many people are involved, but — wow, I’ll keep saying this, this is a lot of people. Maybe, ironically, part of the reason the industry has missed that is how much support the community of visually impaired artists supports one another. But, dear industry, if you need to make a business case for accessibility (which I do totally get), just watch the reactions.