I wasn't sure if Ed was going to post this to the list. Below, you'll find an internal memo from Ed Gray to Avid concerning the recent Access Awards and his participation in a panel on accessibility at South by Southwest. Enjoy. Slau
Everyone, By now, many of you are aware that Avid was honored in Washington, DC with a 2016 Access Award from the American Foundation for the Blind, a distinction that puts Avid in the company of Apple, Google, Major League Baseball. Netflix and Disney Parks & Resorts. Ten days later, I spoke on a panel at South by Southwest in Austin onMainstreaming Accessibility. This is a note to express my thanks and to provide you with some other information if you’re interested. The goal of our accessibility work has been to make the detail of the Pro Tools interface “visible” to those with difficulty seeing it, including sightless users. This has been accomplished by thoughtfully deepening Mac OS VoiceOver support for many menus, controls and parameters used during audio production, including AAX Plug-Ins and tangential applications like Ap Manager and Pace iLok License Manager (ILM). Avid staff, including essential contributors from Kiev, worked together with blind beta testers to prioritize accessibility bugs, resulting in the delivery of the most meaningful fixes. The result has been a Pro Tools product that is nothing short of fully useful for blind users, from those hopping on with Pro Tools|First to owners of professional studios who are independently making a living primarily using Pro Tools|HDX. When I accepted the Award for Avid, I remarked that many companies have made admirable, but short-lived efforts to make their products accessible to people with difficulty seeing, hearing and remembering. To do this right requires focusing on a high bang-for-the-buck range of accessibility features, leveraging the real-world perspective that interested beta testers offer, and giving accessibility a home on the roadmap so it stays robust across releases. In other words, these improvements are not automatically initiated and sustained just because some guy in the company goes blind J. These advances are the result of sustained efforts by Avid and our external test community, including Chris Winsor(Pro Tools designer most responsible for quarterbacking and prioritizing our efforts and guiding those of our beta testers, the Dancing Rhinos team, notably Inna Shevchenko, for dispatching bugs and feature requests like lightning during short windows of opportunity. The Public Relations Team, including Sara Griggs and Timory Burleson, for making noise about this work in the media, our external Beta Team, including Slau Halatyn who personally visited our team in Kiev at his own expense to effect a surge of improvements and former colleagues Rich Holmes and Greg Robles for making this work possible through their wise prioritization and support of our testers. Apologies to anyone I’ve overlooked on this effective and wonderful team. I will stop my narrative here, but I’m always happy to speak with anyone interested in this work and how people are using it. Want to dig in more? Here are some interesting links: · Avid Blog Article by blind professional engineer Slau Halatyn about Pro Tools Accessibility · Avid Blog Article by blind professional composer Kevin Gibson about Sibelius Accessibility · Google Discussion Group on Accessibility for Pro Tools Intro to Apple VoiceOver (text-to-speech utility that ships free as part of Mac OS) Three-minute Video of Slau Halatyn showing Pro Tools with VoiceOver and saying how cool we are (request) For reasons that should be obvious, I am grateful for all that’s been done here. Improvements being made in software, mobile devices, public facilities, movies, office tools, you name it – they are getting so sophisticated and so pervasive that it matters less and less that my vision is bad. To everyone who worked to diagnose, test and implement these improvements and to future contributors, my sincerest thanks – this is your victory lap. Gratefully, Ed Ed Gray Director, Partnering Programs | Product Management | Avid 280 N. Bernardo Avenue Mountain View, CA 94043 United States [email protected] t +1 (650) 576-7315 | Skype edgray1000 Avid Connect 2016: Experience the Future in Motion April 15-17, 2016 | Wynn, Las Vegas Register now -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
