Welcome to Low Vision Music - An Uplifting, Creative, Empathetic Community Promoting Accessible Music Technology

Welcome musical friends to a new Reddit community promoting and collaborating on LowVisionMusic.info, an ever-growing and evolving accessibility project dedicated to making electronic instruments, music software, and production tools easier to understand and use. I've said it once and I'll say it again, greater accessibility is a win for everyone!

My name is Nicholas, and I am a legally blind musician living with retinoschisis. I was diagnosed with this condition as a toddler and have been struggling with my limitations ever since. I have spent much of my life learning how to adapt to equipment that was rarely if ever designed with people like me in mind. Unfortunately, in the music production tool world, accessibility is often thought of as an afterthought at best. Teeny tiny screens, low-contrast labels, switches and knobs, color-dependent controls, complicated convoluted UI systems with endless menu diving, unlabeled touch surfaces, and crowded front, top and bottom panels can make an otherwise exciting instrument difficult or impossible to navigate. I intend to help alleviate some of that tension, and it's my hope that your can help out as well!

Low Vision Music sort of began as my "Hail Mary" attempt to help address some of those barriers. I create free, unofficial accessibility guides for synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, grooveboxes, effects pedals, Eurorack modules, DAWs, VSTs, and other music-making tools. These guides focus primarily on practical details such as physical control layouts, tactile landmarks, magical button combinations (think the Konami code), menu structures, large-print labels, simplified explanations, accessible workflows, and tips, tricks and suggestions that may reduce the need to rely on small displays or visual feedback.

I want to emphasize this point as loudly as I can. This community is open to everyone. Blind and low-vision musicians are at the heart of the project, but cognitively differently abled users, people with other disabilities, older musicians, beginners, educators, caregivers, developers, manufacturers, and well-sighted musicians are all welcome. You do not need to have a disability to participate or benefit. Again, greater accessibility is a win for all.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I believe with all my heart that accessibility helps every single one of us. A clearly organized control panel is useful to someone with low vision, but it is also exceedingly useful on a dark stage or in direct sunlight. A simplified quick-start guide can help someone with a cognitive disability, but it can also help a beginner who feels overwhelmed and crushed by a large bible-sized manual full of technical jargon. Better contrast, clearer labeling, tactile feedback, consistent shortcuts, and more flexible interface options can improve an instrument for nearly every person who uses it. That's why I need outside support from beautiful people like you, with your own unique circumstances and life experiences, to contribute to this project.

My most recently published guide is for the amazing little pocket-sized chord-based synthesizer HiChord by Pocket Audio. I have just updated the website with the guide, but it is still something I plan to continue improving as I learn more about the instrument and receive feedback from other users. I see these guides as living, breathing, growing resources rather than finished products set in stone. Corrections and real-world experiences are extremely valuable, especially because firmware updates and hardware revisions can change how a device works. Also, I'm basically blind. I probably missed something or made a plethora of mistakes. Feel free to point those out to me or provide your own documentation if you the time and energy.

I am also currently developing guides for the Ableton Push 3, Behringer DeepMind 12, SOMA Laboratory Lyra, Walrus Audio Qi Etherealizer, This Is Noise Gamma Mini Synth, and Blipblox After Dark. Each product presents a different accessibility challenge. Some rely heavily on screens and menus, while others are more tactile but still need clearer orientation information. My overall goal is not simply to rewrite existing manuals per se. Rather, I want to create practical companion resources written from the perspective of someone who actually has difficulty seeing the equipment. I see my guides as on-ramps of sorts if that makes any kind of sense.

I need you!

There are many ways to become involved. Community members are HIGHLY encouraged to share their own accessibility guides, tactile-labeling systems, large-print resources, keyboard shortcuts, screen-reader workflows, product discoveries, and creative solutions. You can also suggest instruments or software that need better accessibility information, point out errors in existing guides, describe accessibility problems you have encountered, or explain features that have worked especially well for you. If anything you submit makes it way to the website, you will be credited.

Feedback from well-sighted users is also exceedingly valuable. You may notice that a diagram does not accurately represent a control layout, or maybe that an instruction is unclear, or that an important function has been completely left out or neglected.

Developers and manufacturers are welcome to share information about accessibility features, documentation, current or upcoming firmware changes, or products that may be especially usable for blind and low-vision musicians.

This project is still in its early infancy stages, and I am learning as I go. My visual limitations can make photographing, coding, diagramming, and documenting complex equipment difficult, but I hope the guides will continue to improve with ongoing community participation. I do not expect every resource to be perfect, and I welcome respectful corrections. The purpose is to create something genuinely useful, not to pretend that one person can account for every disability or every possible way of working. I want to consider everyone's needs, and I will try to do so, but I too have my own tunnel vision and limited perspective. Feel free to point out a gap that needs filling.

This is meant to be a constructive, family-friendly community built around cooperation. We can disagree about equipment, software, design choices, or the best way to explain a feature without tearing one another down. The goal is to help musicians gain more independence, confidence, and access to the tools they want to use.

Thank you for being here at the beginning of what I hope grows into a beautiful thing. Tiny little seeds grow into giant, towering, majestic trees, no? Whether you contribute a complete guide, share one useful shortcut, report a problem, suggest a product, or simply learn from what others post, you are part of the effort to make music technology more welcoming and usable for everyone.