Testing a Workflow for Creating Accessible Scores for Music Archives: A Pilot Study

Archival music scores are typically made available digitally as PDF or image-based files. For many users, this is not a problem – but, for some Disabled users, such files are inaccessible. These files cannot usually be remediated, so new alternatives are needed. Here, I discuss a workflow used to create Braille, modified stave notation, and audio files using the Music Encoding Initiative (MEI). I also present the findings of a survey about participants’ habits around finding and using music scores and 4 usability tests conducted on the resulting files. Ultimately, the workflow is successful but requires increased automation to be implemented more broadly.