visually impaired (blind person) and kronos?

[merandus]

Hello

This is my first post in korgforums and i hope that i become one of the users of kronos one day

Well, as the topic explains, i'm a visually impaired person.
I'm like 95% blind and i can't see stuff, just some lights, and abit identification of black and white.

I've been researching for about two months to find a good workstation, and to be honest, i believe that kronos is the best one (not because of its price, or even because it's newly updated than the others), but because normally i love korg and its synths and go on.
I own a PA 80 and i record midi sometimes as well, but i plan to move on to a hardware workstation.

As you guess, my only (and big) problem is kronos's touchscreen.
Since i'm blind, i basicly can't see the screen.
I'm here to hear your experience and advise.
that how much of this workstation i can work with physical buttons?

today i went to a guitar center and touched the keyboard. it had a physical keypad as well, and the guy said that you can do some things with those as well.

Another thing that comes in my mind is that i can memorise some locations that won't move at all in the screen and i maybe can be able to touch those if needed.

From what i understood, i'm 100% sure that i won't be able to program sounds with kronos's engines because it contains graphical instrument effects and you need to drag/flick your fingers to manipulate stuff. but hey, i could take some hours of my brother and design my needed sounds with him.

What do you think... would i be able to select my own saved programs, and sounds, play them live, and finally the important thing, mix them and use the sequencer?

Fortunetly i don't have any problems in using my computer, so i don't have any problems on this end.

Some people are pushing me to use the yamaha motif, but i'm not going to get my hands on that... maybe it's just my taste but i don't like yamaha synths at all, and its piano just makes no sense for me.

Sorry for the long post, and my poor english. i can't wait to get this hardware, even that i'm not sure that i can't use it well...(and maybe using this kinda workstation just becomes a dream for me) kronos's sound quality and abilities which i hear on youtube and other places just drives me crazy.
i'm eagger to hear your advise regarding this.
thank you!

[BasariStudios]

Hello Merandus, i dont know much about these things and your experience
but i think you will probably be able to do anything we can do on the Kronos
once the PC Editor comes out soon...since you are comfortable with Computer
and you can fully use it then it will be a no brainer for you. The only thing
you will have to get used to is just Saving and Loading Sounds on the Synth's
Graphical Interface itself.
Also when you need a specific Sound you could as Me and few of us in here
and we will gladly program the Sound for you.

[merandus]

for

Hello Merandus, i dont know much about these things and your experience
but i think you will probably be able to do anything we can do on the Kronos
once the PC Editor comes out soon...since you are comfortable with Computer
and you can fully use it then it will be a no brainer for you. The only thing
you will have to get used to is just Saving and Loading Sounds on the Synth's
Graphical Interface itself.
Also when you need a specific Sound you could as Me and few of us in here
and we will gladly program the Sound for you.

Hello
thankss! for that.
the pc editor software looks very promising for me and actually made me to sigh.
though there is still a small problem with that, which points to software accessibility.
you know i don't use the mouse at all, and i use the pc keyboard to navigate.
there can be a small a chance that korg designs a less graphical interface for the software, and i could be able to use it.
for example take a look at this.
http://www.justice.gov/crt/508/archive/oldsoftware.html
this checklist makes the software to be 100% accessible but none of developers would do that, (time consuming, maybe? lol)
but still if just even 10% of software just becomes accessible, i could write some scripts for myself and make it accessible to my own use.

again for example look at reason. that one is completely inaccessible because it contains alot of small graphical buttons and sliders, so screenreaders wouldn't be able to identify the text out of 'em.

thank you.

[michelkeijzers]

Thanks for that nice list. I'm a software engineer myself and it would be nice if every softawre program would follow those guidelines.

Why it is not used often? Probably because everything costs development time and mostly such requirements are not a business case. Hard, but reality.

If the Kronos would fits your need: as said above the editor might help a lot. If you download the current editor than you probably might have already a good idea of how 2.0 looks like.

Most programs/combis/set list slots can be selected very easily by hardware buttons. The inc/dec and dial wheel will probably be not really useful for you (unless you know exactly where you want to navigate too), but the numberic touch screen is ideally.

What you also like are the real time control buttons and faders. Even the knobs you can use easily by moving them to the left first and then to you requested value (even if you cannot read the value).

I think set list slot selection might be a bit tricky but it's screen coordinates are fixed afaik so with some training period you probably can select those as well.

[SeedyLee]

Hi Merandus,

I have pretty atrocious (unaided) eyesight, and have spent a bit of time using the KRONOS whilst not really being able to see what I'm doing.

The KRONOS touch screen requires a lot of precision to operate. You need to touch the controls precisely to operate them, so I suspect this might be difficult for you. Furthermore, many of the labels and controls on the KRONOS' screen are incredibly small - I measured some of the labels in the Polysix screens to be less than a millimetre tall, although the vast majority of other labels are considerably bigger.

I think your best bet with the KRONOS is with the PC editor. Although it's not developed with accessibility in mind, it does support some basic use via keyboard. It also works fine with Windows Magnifier, or on a large monitor set to a low resolution. It does not however work well with Text-to-Speech programs or screen readers, such as Windows Narrator.

Fortunately, the KRONOS has a pretty substantial, customisable control surface, meaning that you can perform basic edits and tweaks to sounds with just the physical knobs and buttons. Using the sequencer without the touch screen is not really a viable option however.

Overall, it may be worthwhile looking at a workstation that does not have a touch screen, purely as it then becomes possible to operate the device through tactile feedback and memorisation of controls. I was very adept at using my Triton LE without looking at the screen at all. But if you are interested in the KRONOS, then I hope the above is useful.

[merandus]

thank you for your input.. i do appreciate your words.
@michelkeijzers
and
@SeedyLee

thanks michelkeijzers, i'm happy that you studied them
you guys are right... the joystick and sliders left side of the keyboard is going to help me alot.

so acording to your posts, i'm going to believe that i can't do alot of things with the touch screen... so let's forget about it...
however i have a dumb idea... that can i install a linux-based screenreader on the korg itself? lol
http://linux.die.net/man/1/orca
...?????


anyway.
i've downloaded pc editor v1.0 and just gave it a shot!
i'm excited to even say that the pc editor v1.0 is mostly accessible for me..... wow it even has windows-style-like menus (if you check the top window of the software)
so, it's really awesome! i could navigate most of it and read the texts out there and ajusts some settings, work with menus, and much more.
but since i don't own any kronos for now, i have no idea how sequencing works still.

@@SeedyLee
windows's screenreader is pretty weak and it's a useless junk. i have a powerful screenreader and text to speech engine that contains alot of features and handles the windows softwares very well.
http://www.freedomscientific.com/produc ... t-page.asp
most blind users use this now.



anyway, i'm so happy, but it's a stressfull time..
i hope that the editor v2.0 comes out with the same menus and text fonts...
any ideas that is the software going to look like the same as the previous version?
i believe that i should wait till end of this month to see how's the 2.0 like, but still...
my heart is racing like...so fast.
it really depends on its accessibility. basicly, when the visual and buty of interface increases, it becomes less usable by us because it goes far away from windows-text fonts like.
hope i could explain it well

thanks for your replies.. and sorry for my bad english.

[PianoManChuck]

I don't know how feasible this is, but would it be possible to have something like a high-pixel webcam that's somehow mounted and aimed at the screen? This would then feed a pc or mac running a program that not only allows you to see what the webcam is aimed at, but to also zoom in and to see where your finger is on the screen too. The ability to change where the webcam is aimed at would give you the abillity to see and magnify anyplace on the Kronos surface. This way when adjusting a knob or slider, you might be able to see the physical markings associated with that knob/slider on the board. I suppose I'm thinking of a hi-tech security system that's used for this purpose instead (ability to move/aim a camera and zoom in/out). In addition to being a visual aid, it could also double as a recording device so that you can duplicate making adjustments you've done previously and don't remember what it is you did.

[SanderXpander]

Glad you feel you can probably work with the pc editor for programming. As for playing live - selecting sounds and tweaking basic things like filters and instrument levels, those should definitely be possible using just the buttons, knobs and sliders on the Kronos. The control surface on the left side has variable behavior which is indicated with a led, but you can save the initial state for each program or combi so you could definitely get pretty quick and accurate with this.

Interesting to hear your perspective. I know Stevie Wonder used plenty of synths effectively but I never stopped to think what modern day touch screen based workstations would mean for blind players. Nice to know the Kronos seems to be mostly accessible.

[merandus]

hello

the camera/webcam system idea sounds like a stable and nice way... but it sounds like something complex which i can't manage...


@sander
thanks, though it was with the editor v1.0... i should see that what will happen with version 2.0
... how many days left untill it comes out?
if it turns out accessible i'm going to get the kronos for sure.

[michelkeijzers]

I'm not sure you can install any unix application on the Korg, actually I really doubt it will be possible at all.

Probably the 2.0 editor is the way to go, I cannot say anything about the 2.0 vs 1.x editor features/looks/differences though.

[merandus]

hi

should i own the kronos to download/check the editor 2.0?
or it isn't out yet.
thanks~

[andreidelait]

Hi! If you are using jaws I think I can help a little bit with some guidance. Maybe this will be a good reson for me to learn some jaws scripting to increase the compatibility.
The Editor v2 isn't out yet but is comming soon and I will need to wait untill then because I already ave OS v2.0.2 on my Kronos. maybe we need some private discussions about how do you understand the Kronos and how much experience you have with workstations.
For instance you have to know even the editor has some limitations and it cannot access all the kronos onboard options like sampling mode or RPPR in sequence.
I'm also visualy impaired and I would really like to help you but we need to sure about some things before you buy the kronos.
I also can use jaws on my computer but I never tried to use it with the editor.

Have a nice day and if you think you need some help from me you can contact me anytime you want. I'm a bit busy in this period but I will try to help as much as I can.

[merandus]

hi
@andreidelait

this is very cool
i'm looking forward to this,
and thanks for helping me out.
i have private messaged you regarding this, if you like a better way than the forum's pm system then lem know.
thanks again!

[tritonhaven]

If I remember correctly, the Korg triton was completely useable without touching the screen. Some guys posted a list of button shortcuts to find every function.

Now, I could imagine that the Kronos has the same setup... But I'm not sure about that (yet)

Could someone confirm this?

[andreidelait]

As far as I know it is not possible for Kronos. There are a lot of controls witch are not usable without using touchscreen. Please select a AMS for whatever you want using physical buttons. The Kronos has a lot of controls and functions that cannot be used without the touchscreen. Even the editor cannot access all the options available onboard.