LiveDots: Real time Interactive Braille Music Translator to Integrate Blind Students into Music Classes

Abstract

Music is a universal cultural expression; however blind students may have difficulties to follow a sighted music class due to the lack of a common written music language between teacher and student. This problem is also present in other academic fields, like science. An approach to solve it is EDICO, a real time interactive Scientific Editor. We want to take the solution of real time interactivity to the music field. This paper presents the development process of a real time interactive solution called LiveDots and an experiment to test it in which we develop a real time interactive solution called LiveDots and test it with blindfolded users to check if it could help integration of a blind student in a music classroom. Results show that LiveDots was usable by both sighted and blindfolded users and that real time interactivity may be useful to integrate blind students in music class. These results open up a new horizon of solutions based on real time interactivity to ease blind and sighted students’ integration in the same class.