A number of years ago, I developed a site called Guitar4Blind.com. It was a website designed to teach blind people how to play guitar chords with the use of screen reading software. It was developed with the assistance of a blind guitarist from the United Kingdom named Terry Hopwood-Jackson.
I would create a page and send it over to Terry for testing. Terry would test the site and inform me of whatever typos or mistakes may have been in the page. i would make the necessary changes and he would test the page again. After all necessary corrections were made to a page, we would move on to the next one until the site was eventually finished.
Recently, another blind guitarist reached out to me, named Casey Harper from the state of Virginia. he made some additional suggestions regarding navigation and features to be added to the site.s so with Casey's assistance, I made some changes and added some features. I would inform Casey that a page or section was completed and Casey would test them.
One of the biggest changes to the site was navigation. I added links that would allow people to skip over certain sections that had various descriptions and explanations. This was specifically added so that return visitors could skip over the parts they have already read and familiarized themselves with. The entire site was basically optimized for quicker and easier navigation for return visitors.
I also added a new chord finding feature/ before, the site only allowed people to learn chords by key. Casey suggested also listing them by their root note name. This is a feature I had thought of doing prior to Casey suggesting it but never quite got around to it. I figured that since I was already making major changes to the site as far as navigation goes, I might as well make even more changes.
With Casey's assistance, the site more than doubled in size. I thought that now that a third person (Casey) has been added among the list of contributors, it seems more like the beginning of an organization dedicating to teaching blind people music online.
Maybe more features will be added over time. However, for the meantime, there are already plenty of features there. If anyone reading this blog knows of someone who is blind or visually impaired, use screen reading software and want to learn guitar, please pass on the information. The whole idea behind the website is to give the blind more opportunities to learn music online. In fact, the site has not been optimized to earn money at all. It's not about money, it's about giving more people an opportunity to enjoy making music. Here is the link: http://guitar4blind.com
Bob Craypoe, also known as R.L. Crepeau
No comments:
Post a Comment