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ABSTRACT
This paper reports on an exploratory research-and-development project concerning a device for conveying a conductor’s gestures wirelessly to a visually impaired (blind or partially sighted) performer as a haptic signal. The research team developed this device from January to July 2017 under a University College London (UCL) Institute of Education ‘seed-corn’ grant. As a platform for its development, they firstly observed and analysed video footage of conductors at the Royal Academy of Music, London using Elan software to create a gestural model. Subsequently, through gaining blind end-users’ feedback on the device, as well as an experiment to compare their timing using either (i) a two-dimension haptic signal or (ii) a metronomic pulsation, it is suggested that the development of technologies for this purpose should focus on the meaning the conductor intends to convey coupled with haptic signals blind end-users themselves deem suitable, rather than adopting a ‘sighted perspective’ in attempting faithful transference of two-dimensional captures of arm movements from one medium to another. Reasons for this assertion are explored.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Pseudonyms have been used in this paper for every respondent.
2. We have used the term ‘visually impaired’ as an umbrella term to denote those with sight health problems or the absence of sight such that they meet the requirements of UK registration by an ophthalmologist. Under this umbrella there may be people who the layperson may describe as ‘blind’ or ‘partially sighted’, and we use those terms too. Other terms in common usage include ‘sightless’, ‘sight impaired’, ‘low vision’, etc. with various benchmarks for registration worldwide. ‘Visually impaired’ relates to a continuum from no light perception, through non-functional visual perception i.e. as it relates to daily life, to visual fields or acuity affected to a smaller extent but still severe enough for registration. We acknowledge that terms such as ‘impairment’ (used here), ‘disability’, and ‘handicap’ are often used interchangeably in casual dialogue, with the last one largely discarded a few decades back, and these tend to imply a problem or a lack, and as such may be understood as contributing to a ‘deficit model’ of people’s differing needs and capabilities (see Silvers et al., Citation1998). We use the term ‘visual impairment’ in this paper simply because it is widely used (even by our respondents) and recognisable in the UK.
3. We were supported in understanding medical terminology by Vasuki Sivagnanaval FRCOphth, MD, BSc, MBBS, PG Cert, a consultant ophthalmologist and surgeon from the Royal Eye Unit, Kingston Hospital, London.
4. From http://www.rnib.org.uk (accessed September 9, 2014).
5. Refer to https://nfb.org/blindness-statistics (accessed September 9, 2014).
6. Refer to http://www.and.org.au/pages/disability-statistics.html (accessed January 6, 2015).
7. Refer to http://www.cnib.ca/en/about/media/vision-loss/Pages/default.aspx (accessed January 6, 2015).
8. Refer to http://blindfoundation.org.nz/learn/blindness/statistics-on-sight-loss (accessed January 6, 2015). One problem with collating worldwide figures on visual impairment is the array of overlapping terms used, with e.g. ‘sight loss’ (and even where sight has not been ‘lost’) or ‘visually impaired’ sometimes utilised to mean ‘partially sighted’ as distinct from ‘blind’; and medical registration benchmarks for blindness or partial sight are not comparable across nations. With this paper, we use ‘visual impairment’ for the full range of conditions that relate to voluntary registration by an ophthalmologist.
9. The authors are grateful to the Baluji Music Foundation, a UK registered charity. They were the British Council/Arts Council England grant holders who invited David Baker to travel with them for this additional data collection in relation to his AHRC funded work.
10. We are immensely grateful to Emerita Professor Lucy Green of the University College London Institute of Education for her guidance in designing and conducting this project, as well as with writing this article.
11. Screen reader software packages (e.g. JAWS, NVDA) read the text in digital files and webpages, including other visually-displayed elements, as synthetic speech.
12. Sian Edwards is Head of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music. She has worked: with the Scottish Opera; at Glyndebourne; at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; with the English National Opera; and the London Sinfonietta; among other appointments.
13. Elan software is available from The Language Archive, The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands at http://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/ (accessed July 18, 2017).
14. Kakou is ‘a social enterprise looking to identify and remove barriers that exclude disabled musicians from accessing mainstream music participation’, see http://www.kakou.org.uk/ (accessed July 20, 2017).
15. Janet Oates, conductor of an amateur orchestra including a blind performer, joined us for one of the testing days. We are grateful for her advice.
16. Information on NVivo11 software can be found at http://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-product/nvivo11-for-windows (accessed July 19, 2017).
17. Audacity is free, open-source audio software for multi-track recording and editing, see http://www.audacityteam.org/ (accessed July 20, 2017).
18. Google Drive is cloud data storage, whereby users can access files or folders by a hyperlink sent to them, see https://www.google.com/drive/ (accessed July 20, 2017).
19. Information on SPSS software can be found at https://www.ibm.com/analytics/us/en/technology/spss/ (accessed July 20, 2017).
20. The conductor’s face is obscured with a black square for confidentiality.
21. The respondent’s face has been obscured for confidentiality.