Korg Forums

[dfibraio]

By way of quick introduction. My name is Damon. I am a totally blind keyboard player for about 36 years. I have owned more gear than I care to admit, mostly as experiments to see if the keyboard would work well for me with my visual disability. Lots of gear, sadly, has not. My keyboard rig is currently a mess of Motif xs7, Nord stage 2 compact, roland fa06, oberheim matrix 1000, nord lead a1r and a recently acquired waldorf blowfeld, and alesis vortex and korg rk100s. However, I have lusted after a kronos since its introduction. Sadly, much like my Triton Extreme, M3 and Krome, I had to give up and sell, due to not being able to manage with the touch screen and not having an accessible editor. With my motif and nord stage and lead, I can use my computer, running a screen reading program to access editor/librarian software to accomplish much of what I need to do. With the Nords, the interface is tactile friendly and I only need the sound manager to load in new sounds or move patches around for live performance needs.

With the exception of the nords, I'd sell everything if I knew the Kronos would work for me. Sadly, it is not easy to get a dialogue with Korg going, but I thought maybe if I posted here, some Kronos user may have some enterprising ideas, and maybe even the product manager might read this as well, since I see he posts here. here are some thoughts.

Three possible solutions come to mind. One would be to implement into the Kronos a text to speech system similar to Apple's VoiceOver that works in the Ipad or Iphone. Some issues with that beyond obvious development costs to add a screen reader into a keyboard would be how to get the text to speech system to be heard. Speech could theoretically be routed out of the headphone jack, but that may not work well in live situations.

The more practical solution would be for somebody to develop an editor/librarian that would interface to the kronos the way the current Korg editor does, probably using various sys-x commands, but making the editor friendly to a screen reading program. What this would do for me at least is to allow me to do all my programming at home on my mac using voice over or a pc using a third party screen reading package under windows to do all my sound and combi design and put things into set list mode for live performance. Since the kronos control surface has enough ways to switch sounds through the number pad or whatever, I am not so worried about having to tweak sounds outside of the machine, much like what I do with the Motif now. But when at home, hooked up to my PC or MAC I can do all my heavy lifting there with speech feedback. This would require no work on Korg's part other than to make their editor/librarian speech friendly or for a third party programmer to design an editor with tons of keyboard shortcuts, an effective way of tabbing through the controls and a way to make those controls visible to a screen reading application.

Alternatively, and I have thought this even since the Trinity, Korg can maybe build in ways to edit values that aren't exclusive to the touch screen, either through an attached qwerty keyboard where we can tab through options on each page or on the control surface itself. As long as we have a way to map out each screen, either in a notepad or word document, we can count tabs on each screen to get to the options we want to change and then use the normal means to edit it.

These are just some ideas. I know building a screen reader into Kronos is a far fetched idea, but Korg has done amazing things and I thought this may be something for them to try. Options 2 and 3 are more realistic, I think and option 2 may be the easiest to achieve if I can find a programmer to do the work and of course, get my hands on a kronos myself.

I know this post is already long, so let me end with this. I've spent much of my adult life in various states of creativity. At this point in time, due to the headache of fighting with partially inaccessible gear at best, I am losing the desire to play. Every time I sit down at a Kronos, just playing through the presets, I come up with a lot of possibilities for songs and the thought of having one keyboard that can do everything I need it to do regardless of whether it is a cover band doing classic rock, prog rock or originals, the board would be the same. Sadly, what stops me is a visual limitation and that can be overcome if Korg or somebody outside of Korg with knowledge to design an editor/librarian program that would work with us would take up the challenge. There is a guy who wrote an editor/librarian for the Yamaha motif and he took special care to make his editor screen reader friendly. I know it can be done and that is why after browsing through this forum, I decided to post here and ask if somebody, Korg or an outside third party, could take up the challenge. I, and I am sure other blind people, would greatly appreciate this. I know for myself, it would really make my musical life far less complicated.
_________________
Korg Kronos 61, King Korg, Nord Stage 2 compact, Nord Lead A1R, Alesis Vortex, Akai mpk261 and Native Instrument Komplete Kontrol s88, Yamaha Mo-XF6.

[Ksynth]

I can understand your frustrations pertly because I face the possibility of going blind someday. That made me realize how difficult it would be to manage playing any keyboard never mind tweaking sound parameters.

Its bad enough if I just misplace my glasses.

Your suggestions are very worthwhile and I hope Korg or others take them up.

I know this may not be a great idea but what about creating braille overlays for the Kronos touch screen? At least as a temporary partial aid.

Lots of work to create them and I am not sure an overlay material would allow touch to get through.

You would have to change overlays all too often I realize and that would be a nuisance for you.

Anyway your situation deserves attention and I hope you don't give up.
_________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1251

[dfibraio]

Sadly, braille overlays would not work. Beyond the process of making them up to fit the screen and hoping to get all the info on each overlay for each page, the act of taking them off and putting them on could trigger things from the screen and yes, there could be issues with the overlays interfering with the touch screen directly. I've put a lot of thought into this and the three options in my original post are the best methods. Thanks for the reply, though. I really do hope Korg or somebody here with programming skill can help me.
_________________
Korg Kronos 61, King Korg, Nord Stage 2 compact, Nord Lead A1R, Alesis Vortex, Akai mpk261 and Native Instrument Komplete Kontrol s88, Yamaha Mo-XF6.

[Ksynth]

Another idea:

What about those pens that copy text - then send the text to a voice reader.

Scan the touch screen with the pen and send immediately to the text reader.

Might be a bit fiddly to use as you would have to juggle the pen and your finger unless the pen could also be the stylus?

Here is a link to various pens.

I don't think the scanning will work on any computer screen though. perhaps some modification would enable scanning computer pixels?

Anyone tried this?

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=text%20copy%20pen
_________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1251

[Ksynth]

Apparently a light pen is what is required to scan a computer screen.

There must be something that will work to scan and send to text?
_________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1251

[dfibraio]

There's an app that came out for the IPhone that takes a picture of printed text and reads it back. I can use this to determine what screen I would bge on in the Kronos, assuming the phone can read it, but as far as navigating to different parameters on the screen, there's no easy to tell what option is highlighted.

IN looking at my slim posting history on these forums, I askd similar questions in the M3 forum some years ago. Sadly, I didn't get anywhere and was forced to sell the M3. Even with the phone technology as it is, yes, it gets me a little further, i.e. knowing what page I am on on the touch screen, but we're still stopped at selecting options.

In the M3 days, Korg had this nifty feature where you could hold enter down and press a number on the keypad to navigate to a particular page of settings in the edit mode for voice, combi or whatever. This is beautiful. But, then you have to touch the parameter you want to edit before you can use the inc and dec buttons, wheel or numeric keypad to entery your value. I'm assuming things have no changed in the Kronos. If there was only a way to be able to employ a similar shortcut to say, select option 2 on the page by holding down a button and pressing 2 on the keypad.

IN the M3 days, and triton extreme days as well, I had to load wsamples every time I powered on the keyboard. This was a nightmare at gigs, since I needed a sighted person to do this every tiem. I'm assuming this isn't necessary now since everything comes off the SSD, so that would at least eliminate that hassle.

If Korg could do what Yamaha did where you can edit from a connected USb keyboard, which shouldn't be a major program hassle, that could also be an option. Then all I'd have to do is have a sighted person sit with me and go through screens one at a time and I'd type up the order of options. Maybe the phone could do that as well.

Korg, you guys are close, it's not like the keyboard is completely inaccessible, juust a few things could open up a whole world to people who can't see. I begged years ago in the M3 forum and even in the Radias forum for help, just search my old posts. I know I probably sound like a broken record, but this can be done and I am willing to be the sounding board to do it. I can even borrow a Kronos from somebody I know for testing purposes. It would make me and probably several others, Korg followers for life if you did this. The blind community is small yes, but we're damn loyal if somebody works with us and makes their products accessible to us. I've wanted to play Korgs since 1995 when I first laid hands on the Trinity and idols of mine like Jordan Rudess and Derek Sherinian made keyboards sound the way they do. The idea of taking one Kronos to any gig as opposed to how I have to do it now, where I take my nord to one band, my motif to another band and have to deal with all this excess of gear, different interfaces, on top of the computer software issues...it is counterproductive to being creative. If there was a hardware control surface that would do the functions of the kronos and let me bypass the touch screen, I'd consider it, but even those hardware controllers won't help you in the disk mode to load sounds.

I hope this time will be different and we can get this happening. We're so close and it can be done, just need somebody to listen and say, yes, we can do this and you'll have a customer for life.
_________________
Korg Kronos 61, King Korg, Nord Stage 2 compact, Nord Lead A1R, Alesis Vortex, Akai mpk261 and Native Instrument Komplete Kontrol s88, Yamaha Mo-XF6.

[Ksynth]

Yes, the easiest solution would be for Korg to implement access to the OS etc

And it can't be that difficult, surely.

This would make a great Kickstarter project.
_________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1251

[Ksynth]

I asked on the Soundquest Forums and had this reply: My question was

" is there any text to voice feature with Soundquest for the Korg Kronos. Or any other access support for visually impaired?"

The reply:

There would just be whatever support is already integrated into the OS.

The one alternative might be if there are any tools which will to voice to OSC command conversion. If there is then you could give voice commands to the control program which in turn would create OSC messages to send to Midi Quest. If there is such a program, you could use it to control the Kronos editor inside Midi Quest.
_________________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1251

[dfibraio]

[michelkeijzers]

Within PCG Tools I also have been asked to make some small changes for visually impaired people ... it was about putting texts in a special command to convert to text (where a separate application could speak it).

Also I have been asked again for something similar but I did not get a reaction back (on a facebook forum).

I doubt Korg will ever spend too much time into this (since it is not really there core business), so probably the best way is to go for an external program (as you say, preferably with sysex).

If you have advice what to change in PCG Tools for visually impaired people, let me know to check if I can change it (in an easy way).
_________________

Developer of the free PCG file managing application for most Korg workstations: PCG Tools, see https://www.kronoshaven.com/pcgtools/

[Pouyakhoshgoo]

Dear michel
I wrote you on facebook the other day.
Well my friend tested the PCG tools,
The problem is, when we( me and him with different kronoses and computers) connect the K. To our computers, for some reason we dont hear anything on our computers at all!
Like when we play a track on computer, the player opens but there is no sound!!
_________________
Pouya-khoshgoo

[Pouyakhoshgoo]

Hello
I have not read your message on the forum completely yey, but i would like to let you know that i have some blind friends who recently bought korg kronos,
I have a kronos as well, i have measured all the sizes of different options and pages and check boxes on the Kronos Touch screen, and finaly i came up with a design that im working on now, its gonna be complete in less than a week.
I spent nearly 2 months on designing and editting this tool.
After its complete im gonna 3d print it .
Its like a pad with buttons, we're gonna replace it on the Kronos Touch screen so you can actually use the touch screen by pressing the push bottuns that i deaigned!
Dont sell you Kronos, we're gonna print it and make that pad and test it during the next 2 weeks,
If every thing is ok or if we need to make some changes to that, we gonna do it and finally make it 100 percent accurate!
After that i am happy to send you a copy of the design!
Please keep in touch with me!
_________________
Pouya-khoshgoo

[Pouyakhoshgoo]

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=94039
_________________
Pouya-khoshgoo

[Pouyakhoshgoo]

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=94039
_________________
Pouya-khoshgoo

[Pouyakhoshgoo]

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=94039
_________________
Pouya-khoshgoo