Mobile phones and websites can and should be designed for users with sight loss in mind and W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) offers important web content accessibility guidelines for companies and web designers to create sites that make content more accessible for people with disabilities (including sight impairment).
With all this in mind, creating a music “video” specifically designed for the blind and partially sighted is what X Ambassadors have partnered with Microsoft to try and achieve. What they are terming an “audio-only music video” has been created for the band’s track ‘Boom’ and released as an app for computers, mobile devices and Microsoft’s own mixed reality HoloLens headset.
It uses Windows Sonic 3D, a bespoke spatial-audio technology, that lets users pick between two scenes – either a walk in Bushwick, Brooklyn near the band’s old rehearsal space or Ithaca, New York (where two of the band members grew up). The app description says, “Field recordings from each location bring the surroundings to life.” With headphones in, the audio shifts when the user rotates their phone left or right.
It all sprang from the fact that keyboardist Casey Harris himself is blind so this is very much a deeply personal mission for the band.
“The app is for everybody,” he said in a press statement. “I hope that visually impaired people enjoy it and get a lot out of it, but I’m also really excited for sighted people and everyone else to experience the world and experience the music video in a totally different and new way.”
There will also be a live tie in where it will be recreated as a “VIP pre-show experience” on X Ambassadors’ tour. This part will be multi-sensory (with a crackling fire if you choose the Ithaca option or a bustling bodega if you choose the Bushwick option).
It is an important and timely reminder, given just how much marketing and social activity is based on still and moving images, that not only are certain audiences excluded from this but that music is inherently a sonic medium and that’s where its greatest power still lies.
