- So let's now turn to improving access to music braille. And we'll hear from Dr. Sara Morley Wilkins. - This presentation is about improving access to music braille Giving an update on the achievements of the DAISY Music Braille Project in 2021 and Next Steps. Hi, I'm Dr. Sarah Morley Wilkins, the Project Manager and User Experience Consultant with projects. Our project which runs to the end of 2022 is focused on securing the future of music production in the face of declining expertise and a lack of suitable conversion tools and file format standards. My presentation will describe our activities, the tools we're developing, and our upcoming work. We have several strands of activity working towards this goal. The development of a professional conversion tool for transcribers and an interactive multimedia music notation and editing tool for blind end users. As well as a mission to influence file format standards and musical publishing practise to be more inclusive for braille readers. And in maintaining an active international stakeholder group who share and develop information together. This stakeholder group of transcribers, end-users, teachers, developers, production managers, and more, help to share and develop information together in this niche sector as well as testing and giving feedback on the developing tools. Good progress continues to be made on all activities across the project. Now I'd like to share with you a little more detail on the development of two tools, which will help to get music braille to end users more efficiently. And then, I'll describe what's happening in the other areas of the project and what's coming up next. Firstly, let me tell you about MakeBraille. The online professional automated conversion tool for transcribers. MakeBraille from dzb lesen, the German Centre for Accessible Reading, is nearing the end of its two year from the development and has had over a year of real-world testing with transcribers from the funding agencies. It's incorporated a huge number of new features in response to our prioritised sector requirements. Making it suitable for most countries music braille production needs. It takes well marked up scanned print music files and well-structured music, XML files, and converts them into music braille files. So what's new in MakeBraille quarter three? Well, further country specific requirements have been added for different types of layout. Different types of music and notation. Improved handling of conversions of complex scores. Improved recognition from scanned files and support for pages larger than a four. More customization options, including a conductor's profile, an expert music braille user profile, and the ability to create and select from individual named user profiles. And options for listing configuration options in the converted music file itself easy reference. And what's next to MakeBraille? We'll be finishing our plan development and fixes by the end of 2021, which include the ability to select parts from the score for conversion. Pre formatting for single-sided double-sided braille, and further improvements to MusicXML, guidance, and file checking. As well as updated help resources and the implementation of remaining country specific requirements. When will MakeBraille be available? Well, these will be releasing MakeBraille with a licence agreement in 2022. Making it available to agencies and transcribers for music road production. And we'll continue to maintain and develop it for the future. The second tool we're developing is SMB-MuseScore. A free interactive tool for end-users. Work is also going well in the first two years of funded development for these two tools, which will work closely together. SMI Braille from the SMI Centre for the Blind, with MuseScore, the free mainstream music notation editing programme . Together, these tools will give a fully interactive and multimedia music notation and editing tool for creating, reading and exploring music independently in speech sound and braille. So what's new in SMB-MuseScore in quarter three? Fundamental music row functionality is being steadily added to the SMB converter tool, according to our prioritised sector requirements and the music braille rule book. So it can cater for international music, braille standards, and country specific formatting. It just being regularly tested by the development team. MuseScore is adding accessibility, improvements, and fixes, which give better keyboard support and speech access to the notation editor and the score, and better music XML export. So the exported files are more accessible to blind users. So what's next for SMB-MuseScore? By the end of 2021, SMB will be releasing a beta test version, which will be available to fund us to test and give feedback on. Further functionality will be added by the end of the year, including advanced repetitions, regular and irregular note groupings, music word's dictionary, missing rules from NBC part two and three, custom translation based on instrument type and a full score translation option. MuseScore will continue adding accessibility fixes, and improvements. Beta versions of new functionality are being tested weekly, ahead of a release of MuseScore Four in early 2022, which will include substantial accessibility improvements. When will SMB -MuseScore be available? The connected SMB-MuseScore functionality will be fully available by the end of 2022. But improvements in both tools will be made in each new release until then. Both tools are free. Making them a very good solution for blind musicians in all walks of life. So moving now to an update on our other project activities. In addition to this work on tool development, there are five other important ongoing work strands, which are helping to secure the future of music, both production and use. And I want to give you a short update on what else we've been working on and what's coming next. One, file standards. Having made proposals to W3C for accessibility improvements, we're happy that the latest MusicXML release contains some of our recommendations. This means that the MusicXML files created by Mainstream Notations Tools can be more accessible to speech and braille users. We've also recommended improvements for its access a file format MNX. Though a release date for this is not yet been set by W3C. Two, Music Braille Production Network. We're about to try a new network infrastructure. Giving the agencies an efficient way to source and commission music braille scores between each other. Making best use of available international expertise. 12 agencies have signed up for the trial and will be searching for music braille holdings, commissioning, and possibly also producing new transcription orders for each other to test the process. Three, inclusive music publishing. We would like to work with a music publisher in the final year of the project to help them to create music schools, which are born accessible. Making it possible for them to generate an accessible master file, which can be exported for blind musicians to use. We have developed and trialled guidelines for setting print music, which when followed, generate suitable master files with accessibility tags built in. These could be very important files for our sector and could mean that blind musicians can have almost instant access to the schools they need using the different tools available. Four, access to online collections of music braille. We know that locating existing music braille scores is a constant frustration for transcribers right now. And we'd like to help improve the search and retrieval of suitable scores from online or library collections. We're currently asking our stakeholder group for their experiences of searching for and/or uploading music braille scores using online collections or libraries With a view to us working together with those organisations to harmonise metadata and make the upload and search process more efficient and successful. Five, promotion of teaching and learning resources. We're also considering how we can best help to signpost and promote existing teaching, learning resources for music braille, both for users and teachers. We're also asking our stakeholder group to advise us of all valuable resources they know about with a view to helping to signpost to them and to identify and fill any gaps together during 2022. Now, a few words about project funding. The project has been kindly funded by contributions from within the sector, by agencies and organisations with an interest in music braille. And we'd like to thank CNIB, DAISY Strategic Development Fund, MTM. and NLB, Norwegian Association of the Blind, NOTA, ONCE, RNIB, SBS and Vision Australia. We have a funding request open right now, seeking contributions to the remaining few thousand dollars required for the 2022 project costs. So what happens after the project funding? The music file tools themselves will be available and maintained by their respective agencies. Some free, some with a licence agreement. We will leave legacy resources such as improved file standards, reference resources and stakeholder networks, which will all have helped improve the way in which music braille is created. We also hope the directives will inspire ongoing future collaboration in different ways in this niche field. But also having talks with the World Blind Union and have been invited to contribute proposals for related initiatives that you may wish to take forward. For more information or to sign up to our mailing list, you can visit our project page at daisy.org/music-braille or email us at musicbraille@daisy.org. Thanks so much for your time. And I look forward to staying in touch.