Breaking Accessibility Barriers: Computational Intelligence in Music Processing for Blind People
A discussion on involvement of knowledge based methods in implementation of user friendly computer programs for disabled people is the goal of this paper. The paper presents a concept of a computer program that is aimed to aid blind people dealing with mu
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Introduction In this paper we attempt to study application of computational intelligence in a real life computer program. The program is supposed to handle music information and to provide an access for disabled people, for blind people in our case. The term computational intelligence, though widely used by computer researchers, has neither a common definition nor it is uniquely understood by the academic community. However, it is not our aim to provoke a discussion on what artificial intelligence is and which methods it does embed. Instead, we rather use the term in a common sense. In this sense intuitively understood knowledge representation and processing is a main feature of it. Enormous development of computer hardware over past decades has enabled W. Homenda: Breaking Accessibility Barriers: Computational Intelligence in Music Processing for Blind People, Studies in Computational Intelligence (SCI) 107, 207–232 (2008) c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 www.springerlink.com
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bringing computers as tools interacting with human partners in an intelligent way. This required, of course, the use of methods that firmly belong to the domain of computational intelligence and widely apply knowledge processing. Allowing disabled people to use computer facilities is an important social aspect of software and hardware development. Disabled people are faced problems specific to their infirmities. Such problems have been considered by hardware and software producers. Most important operating systems include integrated accessibility options and technologies. For instance, Microsoft Windows includes Active Accessibility techniques, Apple MacOS has Universal Access tools, Linux brings Gnome Assistive Technology. These technologies support disabled people and, also, provide development tools for programmers. They also stimulate software producers to support accessibility options in created software. Specifically, if a computer program satisfies necessary cooperation criteria with a given accessibility technology, it becomes useful for disabled people. In the age of information revolution development of software tools for disabled people is far inadequate to necessities. The concept of music processing support with a computer program dedicated to blind people is aimed to fill in a gap between requirements and tools available. Bringing accessibility technology to blind people is usually based on computational intelligence methods such as pattern recognition and knowledge representation and processing. Music processing computer program discussed in this paper, which is intended to contribute in breaking the accessibility barrier, is solely based on both fields. Pattern recognition is applied in music notation recognition. Knowledge representation and processing is used in music information storage and processing. 9.1.1 Notes on Accessibility for Blind People The population of blind people is estimated to up to 20 millions. Blindness, one of most important disabilities, makes suffering people unable to use ordinary com
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