Understanding Audio Production Practices of People with Vision Impairments Abir Saha Anne Marie Piper Northwestern University University of California, Irvine Evanston, IL, USA Irvine, CA, USA
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT of audio content creation, including music, podcasts, audio drama, The advent of digital audio workstations and other digital audio radio shows, sound art and so on. In modern times, audio content tools has brought a critical shift in the audio industry by empower- creation has increasingly become computer-supported – digital in- ing amateur and professional audio content creators with the nec- struments are used to replicate sounds of physical instruments (e.g., essary means to produce high quality audio content. Yet, we know guitars, drums, etc.) with high-fdelity. Likewise, editing, mixing, little about the accessibility of widely used audio production tools and mastering tasks are also mediated through the use of digital for people with vision impairments. Through interviews with 18 audio workstations (DAWs) and efects plugins (e.g., compression, audio professionals and hobbyists with vision impairments, we fnd equalization, and reverb). This computer-aided work practice is that accessible audio production involves: piecing together accessi- supported by a number of commercially developed DAWs, such 1 2 3 ble and efcient workfows through a combination of mainstream as Pro Tools , Logic Pro and REAPER . In addition to these com- and custom tools; achieving professional competency through a mercial eforts, academic researchers have also invested signifcant steep learning curve in which domain knowledge and accessibility attention towards developing new digital tools to support audio are inseparable; and facilitating learning and creating access by production tasks (e.g., automated editing and mixing) [29, 57, 61].