MusicXML to braille music conversion

[Jacques Menu]

Hello folks,

There have been posts in the past on this subject in the Lily users’ list.

I now have a first draft of such a translator producing braille music in Ascii 
BRF and Unicode files. It translates the basic elements, such as time 
signatures, measures, notes, etc.

This development was frozen some time ago though: the mail I sent to ask who 
could provide technical information about such files generation was mostly 
never answered by the various individuals and organisms I sent it to, and I got 
discouraged.

DAISY Consortium is very active in the field of braille music, see 
https://daisy.org/activities/projects/music-braille/. 
According to the contacts I’ve had with them, they aim at an integrated 
graphical braille score editor, that would take the score structure into 
account. They already have done work with Veia Progetti, see 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf60CpZQ_Iw. Of course, they have resources I 
don’t have.

The good news on my side is that I met two interested people at the Salzburg 
conference. Also, the bicentenial of the first braille book published by Louis 
Braille himself will take place in 2025, and that could raise interest for 
braille music.

A former braille music teacher told me that he is pessimistic for braille music 
teaching in the future, though: it is quite difficult for the blind people to 
learn, and efforts to integrate the blind in society, such as providing music 
in audio format, may undermine it.

I’m interested in knowing what you think and maybe hope in this area.

A nice day!

JM