[musictlk] accessible keyboards

[Richard Holloway]

My daughter (blind, no light perception, excellent braille reader, age 12) likes playing electronic keyboards. She especially enjoys experimenting with various sounds and all sorts of settings and features on various sequencers and arrangers, but all too often the more "full-featured" keyboards seem to need a good deal of sighted assistance, largely due to a need to scroll through menus to select various options and manipulate closely packed controls. 

I have a Korg Radias here, for example, with over 100 tightly packed knobs and switches as well as a visual display to show selections. My daughter loves the sounds the unit makes, but is pretty much limited to scrolling forward and backwards with the big knob to select sounds and randomly experimenting with the controls to fine-tune things— the knobs are too tight to really add much in the way of braille to help learn which knobs do what, and it is easy to get lost and be dozens of selections away from the sound she wants with the big knob— there must be 100 sounds or so in a loop, so you cannot even find the first or last sound and count forward or backwards...

I’m happy to assist her, but she wants to be independent, and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be. Like it or not, I cannot be available 24/7 to help her find what she is after, and this should be fun for her, not a big hassle. 

I’m wondering what electronic keyboards anyone here may have found to be particularly blind-accessible, especially units with a nice array of features. I did see that Moog has recently decided to offer a Braille overlay for a Sub Phatty, but unfortunately my daughter is more into digital sounds and features than the Analog design of this Moog.

What else is out there? Any suggestions?

Software solutions (especially Mac-based) would also be an option, if there is something really good out there, but I’d love an accessible, free-standing unit with an easy-to-navigate design. Seems like somebody might even offer some sort of audible feedback to help learn and explore controls by now (something that could possible be turned off at will, like voiceover on a Mac or iDevice.)

Thanks in advance,

Richard Holloway