Dear Friends,
I have something really exciting to share with you — today is a big day for us visually impaired music producers, musicians, and audio engineers!
I’ve been in talks with Roland for a few years about making their amazing product line accessible, and I’m happy beyond words to say the time has finally come — they’re moving forward, full speed ahead.
To kick things off, Roland has collaborated with me to produce fully accessible written documentation, along with audio and video tutorials, for their fantastic V-Stage keyboard. Although the V-Stage is not accessible in the traditional sense, meaning it does not have a talking interface, its tactile layout is superbly designed, and its near one-knob-per-function approach makes it a genuinely great interface for us as visually impaired users to navigate.
And the V-Stage is just the beginning. Roland is excited to bring accessibility to many more of their hardware and software products, including the amazing Roland Cloud, which offers an extremely affordable subscription giving you access to thousands of fantastic sounds spanning several decades — sounds that have and continue to shape the music we know and love. Even better, the head of Roland Future Design Labs and his amazing team are deeply passionate about accessibility and plan to make it a high priority in future product development.
Now here’s where we come in.
Roland has created an accessibility section on their website, which houses the accessible materials for the V-Stage. There is also a short, screen reader friendly survey that they would like as many visually impaired people as possible to fill out.
Please take a few minutes to fill it out since it would provide Roland with the evidence they need to gauge how much interest there is within our community for their products, which in turn will secure final approval for the commitment of man hours and other resources needed to go full speed ahead with accessibility development. Please try to fill it out as soon as possible, since the decision on whether to move forward is set to be made soon.
Please see the link to the accessibility section of the Roland website below.
Please also share this post on your social media platforms, as well as to any other accessibility-related forums.
Thank you for being part of this journey with me.
Your friend,
Jay
