I have finally
“blind hacked” my track lists for my Electronic music radio show, Free Bass on Global Funk Radio. For those who don't
know, a "blind Hack" is a technique or series of techniques blind people
use to interact with the sighted person world. An easy example is a white cane or
counting steps. Another example is I used to "cut and paste my emails" in Word
documents to read them because my screen reader didn't read my email software.
I have a “blind hack “to find the proper playlist on my lap top DJ software,
M-Audio Torq. I have many more tools and strategies that I use in everyday
life, many of which I probably don't' even notice, because I've been doing them
for so long. But, one thing I've had particular
problems with is the making of a track list
for the show I've been doing for thirteen years on Global Funk Radio.
Here’s the
thing. At one time I could read record labels with a
magnifying glass. For a while, I could magnify my screen large enough to read
my lap top. So, early on I was able to
make some sort of play list after each show. As my vision became worse and worse, I gave up
on making track lists all together. Unfortunately, screen readers have never
worked with my DJing software, M-Audio Torq. I wasn't happy with this decision,
but I really didn't have a choice. I have always felt that it's important to
share the name of the tracks I play, especially if the tunes are promos or new
releases that the audience may not be familiar with. To make matters worse, my
vision is always going downhill, so even putting together a playlist before a
show has become very difficult.
For the past two,
or so, years, making a pre-show playlist goes a little something like this. After
taking minutes to find the "search" box, I typed in an artist's name
or album, and then found my way to the list of tracks. This is after I had to
ask a sighted person to help me add new tracks to the Torq database. Then, I
used the software's queue function to find the tracks I wanted and loaded them
onto the decks one by one. Every time I wanted to change the artist, I had to
go back up to the top of the screen and find that pesky “search box”. Sometimes,
I lost the search box and it took me another five minutes to find it to repeat
the process. Apparently, I really like
playing Electronic music to keep torturing myself, but I still think it's worth
it.
Adding the
tracks from a compilation was a particularly anonymous process. I typed the comp name in and found the track I
liked, not knowing the artist I have just loaded on Deck 1. It was such a huge
ordeal to get a pre-show playlist done.
It left me wondering how much longer I could DJ digitally. To be unable
to efficiently find the "search box” finally pushed me to find a
solution--quite by accident, no doubt.
I came up with the solution while putting
together a Techno mix of some promos I received recently. Instead of using the
Torq "search box” to find the tracks one by one, (this would have taken
forever; the artists and tracks were unfamiliar) I decided to "Copy and Paste" the
tracks into a folder, then label them "1 Feb Mix, 2 Feb Mix, 3 Feb
Mix...". The next step was to find
a handy dandy sighted person to help add the new folder to the database. I'm
still working on a hack for that. Then, I just typed “Feb Mix" in the “search
box”. Voila! All the tracks I needed
were at my fingertips. No searching all over the screen for the “search box”. I only needed to find it once! It didn't take me but a second to realize I
could do this with my show set list too. I tried it today and it works really well. The
best part is that it has an added bonus;
I can browse a bit more in my collection to find tracks I haven't played
before or maybe overlooked.
I have solved both
problems of being unable to put together a track list, coupled with the extraordinarily
hard time of finding all the tracks for a show. I think “pro bird murderers”
call this "Killing two birds with one stone”. "What did he say?" I believe I can file this discovery under
"Why didn't I think of this before?”
I will continue to struggle with guessing the artist’s name on the vinyl
that I play, but I usually have a pretty good idea where my records live
between plays. I can deal with that.
In a perfect
world, it would be nice if DJ gear manufacturers made an accessible software,
CDJ or controller. Hint Hint!
