Hi Slau. That's encouraging. Thank you very much for all you've invested in this quest;time, work, money etc.
If it did come down to something like a Kickstarter fundraising campaign, I for one would certainly contribute financially and help spread the word via social media etc. Cameron. On 11/14/12, Slau Halatyn <[email protected]> wrote: > As some of you might recall, David Gibbons, the person who was truly to > thank for finally making the work of accessibility happen at Digidesign, > left the company a couple of years ago. He was and continues to be a great > source of support for the cause of making Pro Tools more accessible. The > reigns within Avid were handed to Bobby Lombardi. Bobby was present at the > meeting where we saw the first results of the programming work done for > VoiceOver. Bobby, in fact, was the first and only person of those who > attended that meeting to respond to my follow up email thanking those in > attendance. Unfortunately, Bobby took over at a time when Avid began to > slash their workforce. Massive layoffs commenced and Avid underwent severe > cutbacks. During this time, my limited contact with Bobby made one thing > clear: Avid was not going to do anything concerning accessibility when they > were scrambling to minimize their bleeding. It was also quite clear that > Avid's focus was on their video market. It's widely known that Avid bought > Digidesign to ensure a robust audio platform for their video business. With > Pro Tools in the service of their Avid video production environment, the > music production aspect of Pro Tools was cut back. Hence, the sale of > M-Audio (where they lost tens upon tens of millions) and the cutting of > Advanced Instrument Research or AIR plug-ins. With resources at a minimum > and continuing to shrink, it was communicated to me that things were highly > uncertain because of their inner crises. there was never a time when Bobby > outrightly said they would not continue the work. He only indicated that > they essentially had no development capacity. He suggested that they might > be able to gain some headway through something called "hack-a-thon" where > engineers essentially spend a weekend to take on a programming project just > to throw things on the wall and see what sticks. Sometimes, it's a pet > project, a new feature, a shot in the dark. Sometimes it can be an idea put > forth by a given team. He suggested that it might be a way to address the > immediate issue of the AAX plug-in accessibility. After weeks had gone by > and there seemed to be no word, I scheduled the meeting for October. > > Bobby, as nice of a guy as he is, is not the best at returning emails. He > did, however, promptly reply to me and agreed to the meeting. In fact, he > invited a couple of other people at Avid including Rich Holmes, another > attendee from our last meeting. Bobby did mention in his reply that someone > had taken a look at the AAX issue and they didn't see any easy way to fix > it. This didn't concern me at the time because I felt it was more important > to have the meeting and address the bigger picture first. By the time it got > to our meeting there were several more people present including guys from UI > design, programming, special projects and partnering. The partnering guy is > the one in charge of third-party developers. This was probably going to be > an important person at some point along the way. > > When I got to the meeting, I saw Rich Holmes first. As I mentioned, Rich was > at the previous meeting. He was quite impressed with the work Xiang, the > intern, had done with VoiceOver support in Pro Tools back in 2009. At that > meeting, Rich asked a lot of questions and took a very genuine interest in > the subject. He was the one who was concerned with plug-in accessibility > when we faced the possibility of not having plug-in accessibility in the > initial 8.0.3 release. His concern was, if we didn't have accessible > plug-ins, what was the point? In other words, he felt that it was important > enough to pursue a solution somehow. I indicated to him that, while > plug-ins were certainly critical, it would at least be usable for recording > and editing, at least for a start. As it turned out, Xiang figured out a > work-around and managed to implement it for the 8.0.4 release. Anyway, > that's just a little background about Rich. back to our previously scheduled > meeting… > > I was told that Bobby would probably not be joining us. It wasn't entirely > surprising to me because I had learned, quite accidentally, from an > interview with bobby on Pensado's Place that bobby was no longer in charge > of Pro Tools and that he was moving over to the Sibelius side of things. > rich Holmes was the new person in charge of Pro Tools, both hardware and > software. Frankly, I was relieved that the new person to take over was a > person with whom I've already interfaced and had some background with. > > The next person to walk in was a bit of a surprise. It was Ed Gray, the > person in charge of partnering, like I said, the third-party developer > liaison. Ed's been with Digidesign/Avid for about 17 years. Several years > ago, Ed started having trouble with his vision due to glaucoma. Two years > ago he lost a significant amount of sight and he is now legally blind and > uses a white cane. Surprise, surprise, eh? > > Once the others were in attendance, I went over the agenda. I did break the > ice, so to speak and not that there was any ice to begin with necessarily, > by saying I would be happy if 3 things happened: Number 1, if the San > Francisco Giants won the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. This > yielded the desired response until I also mentioned that, although I was > from New York, my ex-wife is from Detroit. This got an even better response. > This is all to say that the atmosphere was friendly and, although the nature > of the meeting was serious business, I felt it was important to balance it > with some levity. That mission accomplished, we discussed the issues of > plug-in format, the fact that the current aAX is essentially a transitional > format, the various tables that are not accessible because they're custom UI > elements, the various windows that are not yet accessible, etc. We covered a > lot of areas including the fact that the 64-bit version of Pro Tools would > be in alpha in the near future and that it would likely be released some > time next year, perhaps the middle of the year. Rich Holmes said that this > was a perfect time to consider these issues because of the imminent new > version. > > The gorilla in the room was the issue of development capacity. I did make it > clear fairly early on that I recognized the issue and that it wouldn't deter > me from laying out the issues and discussing possible solutions. When we > finally got through the major points, I proposed an idea that I hoped would > prompt a certain response. It was a bit of a gamble but I thought it was > worth it. The response was, in a way, actually better than I had hoped. > Here was my proposal: > > Given that Xiang had spent roughly 4 weeks working on accessibility, I > suggested that if someone were to spend another, say two or three months > exclusively working on the same issue, we'd probably get just about > everything working. Now, this, of course, takes money. Money is something > they are not rolling in. Pick up the Wall Street Journal and you'll get a > good idea of how Avid's doing when articles about them appear in the > financial section. I do know that Avid has historically outsourced their > work to a company called Global Logic in Kiev, Ukraine. As some of you know, > I regularly travel to Kiev to engineer orchestral recording sessions and I'm > fluent in Ukrainian. First of all, Avid wouldn't outsource to anybody > outside their established corporate relationships so this covered that > angle. From a project manager standpoint, I could personally interface with > a programmer from global Logic to handle the work, Avid wouldn't have to > worry about that aspect. A programmer could work alongside the normal > development without stepping on anyone's feet. > > The last part of the puzzle was the funding. I suggested that I could start > up a KickStarter campaign to raise funds to pay Global Logic for the work. > Yes, it would place a burden on me to raise the money and, yes, it would > take some time but I'm confident that it could be done. It would mean no > burden for Avid whatsoever and we could get it done. Stay with me. > > Before we could discuss any more details about that approach, Rich made it a > point to say that he felt this might not be necessary. The way he saw it, > just as there was an initiative in Pro Tools 10 for international language > support, there should be a similar initiative for VoiceOver support. He > posited that accessing Pro tools through VoiceOver is not really different > than accessing it through another language. Naturally, I was glad to hear > that coming from him. Others chimed in with similar support of his position. > In fact, they felt it should be an initiative throughout the product line > including Sibelius. The person in charge of special projects, Phil something > (his surname escapes me), actually comes from Sibelius. He's well aware of > the accessibility that JAWS users had under Windows. Again, the support of > the people in Daly City was clear and, in my opinion, genuine. > > Of course, taking this path would require essentially going to the top, to > the CEO of Avid, Gary Greenfield. Everyone at the meeting spoke highly of > Gary. They referred to him as a good guy and conscientious. This might sound > strange in light of the fact that Avid has gone through a horrible time. > rich and I agreed that we would both write letters to Mr. Greenfield. If > successful, this approach would ensure that the work of accessibility would > simply become part of the process of programming and in-house testing. > Without that, it's likely that things would just continue to break down. > Now, that's not to say that nothing could be done in the future but there's > absolutely no telling when and it seemed like a more durable choice to get > it sanctioned rather than to hope for a window of opportunity that would > likely never come. > > As some of you know, I attended the 133rd Aes convention that weekend and, > consequently, was stranded in San Francisco for several more days. When I > got back, I had to catch up with a number of issues. Two days ago, on > Monday, I sent a letter to Gary Greenfield. At the risk of making this > message entirely too long, I'm posting it below: > > > "Dear Mr. Greenfield, > > I'm writing to you on behalf of blind Pro Tools users throughout the world > with an urgent request regarding the accessibility of the software. At the > outset, I should mention that I recently met with several people in Daly > City and we concluded that we should go to the top to ensure that the matter > is resolved in a lasting manner. There's some history to this situation > which I'll address as briefly as I can, and will gladly provide more > background if needed. Hopefully I can paint a clear picture of how we've > come to this point and the crisis we currently face. > > Back in the mid '90s, there were a number of blind audio professionals who > were interested in using Pro Tools. Using a third-party program called > outSPOKEN, they attempted to navigate Pro Tools within Mac OS 9, but there > was a problem with the systems crashing. Rick Boggs, a blind producer in Los > Angeles, managed to get the folks at Digidesign and the folks from Berkeley > Systems (the makers of outSPOKEN) to put their heads together to figure it > out. They found that some code in the DAE (Digidesign Audio Engine) software > was causing the problem, so Digidesign altered it. With that, Pro Tools > became the most accessible DAW platform for blind users. It was at that time > that I and other blind engineers invested in our Pro Tools HD systems. > > When Apple released OS X, there were no third-party screen readers on the > market available for it. Blind users stuck to OS 9 for a few years and it > wasn't of great concern to those who used Pro Tools because Digidesign > didn't make its own transition to OS X support for quite a while. > Eventually, Apple decided to build a screen reader called VoiceOver right > into the operating system. At that point, Pro Tools was already available > for OS X and a few of us were eager to upgrade to the latest version > (v6.4). > > Unfortunately, the upgraded version of Pro Tools turned out to be > inaccessible. The only things one could access were the menu bar and a > handful of dialogs that used the Apple framework. Everything else, it > seemed, was invisible to VoiceOver. A few of us tried to contact Digidesign > regarding these issues but were unable to make much headway. Eventually, we > began a petition calling for Digidesign to commit to action, gathering over > 1,200 signatures. We were about to send it to various officers in the > company when I received a call from David Gibbons (then V.P. of Marketing) > inviting me to come to Daly City to discuss the situation. Digidesign had > become aware of the petition and the issue had finally reached someone who > took interest. At our first meeting in 2006, I demonstrated the level of > accessibility I had under OS 9 with outSPOKEN and how, under OS X, the > latest version of Pro Tools was completely inaccessible. It was clear to > David that we had something that used to work but that was now broken and > needed to be fixed. Incidentally, more details about our meeting and the > actual petition can be found at: > http://www.protoolspetition.org > > It turned out that Avid had been planning a few transitions in the code, > which needed to happen before undertaking any work on accessibility. > Essentially, they needed to follow Apple's programming guidelines to define > the windows and controls in such a way that VoiceOver would recognize them. > In 2008, an intern was assigned to the project and spent a few weeks adding > the required bits of code. I flew out to Daly City toward the end of the > process to provide feedback. It was amazing to see how much he had completed > in that short amount of time. > > Pro Tools 8.0.4, released in 2009, was the first version to include those > coding additions, which allowed it to support the VoiceOver feature in OS X. > Though still perhaps only 70% accessible, it was at least usable. Subsequent > versions continued to be mostly accessible until version 10, where something > broke. The new AAX plug-in format was significantly different and, > unfortunately, the issue of accessibility wasn't foremost in anyone's mind > as they developed it. To add to this, David Gibbons was no longer at Avid > and the issue of VoiceOver compatibility appeared to fall by the wayside. > > Since I was going to San Francisco for this year's AES show, I scheduled a > meeting with several people in Daly City. It became clear during our meeting > that the actual work isn't especially difficult. Rich Holmes suggested that > accessing Pro Tools through VoiceOver is really no different than accessing > it in another language. Given the push for international language support in > Pro Tools 10, it would seem that VoiceOver support could fit naturally > within this effort. However, we agreed that rather than take a skunkworks > approach to accessibility (as had been done before), it would behoove us to > make it official and have the support of the CEO to ensure that it simply > becomes part of the UI process and in-house testing. I was encouraged to see > genuine support for making sure that Avid's product line is fully > accessible. Rich said that he would write a letter to you and I agreed to do > the same. > > Please pardon the somewhat lengthy journey I've taken to this point but > here's where I make an appeal to you as the person who can make this happen. > I know that Avid receives requests of all kinds for new features. Please > consider the fact that while most people's requests have to do with > preferences or workflows, our request for access to Pro Tools means the > difference between being able to use Pro Tools or not. Yes, we currently > have some degree of accessibility but, now that plug-ins are not accessible, > we're seeing stuff beginning to break. With the shift to 64-bit, it's likely > that other things might break if left unchecked. The actual amount of work > necessary is not great when you consider that it's largely a matter of > defining and labeling elements. We're not asking for anything more than for > Avid to follow Apple's published programming guidelines, which will ensure > that Pro Tools is accessible. > > Gary, I regularly receive emails from blind students and professionals from > all over the world who, when they encounter Pro Tools, are so excited to > learn that it's fairly accessible right out of the box. They're equally > concerned when they learn that the new plug-in format is not accessible. Who > knows what the future will hold unless universal design is made a > consideration. I, too, have a personal stake in this. I make my living as an > audio engineer and recording studio owner. I'm a trained professional who > wishes to use the platform of choice alongside my sighted colleagues. I have > no esoteric requests. I'll leave that to the sighted folks ;) My request—our > request is that Avid follow Apple's programming guidelines and maintain an > accessible Pro Tools for blind users through the VoiceOver feature built > into Mac OS X. > > I know that you will appreciate the weight of this request. It's probably > one of the most important letters I've ever had to write. I also have > hundreds of blind audio professionals waiting anxiously with the hope that > Avid will commit to making its products accessible. Thank you so much for > taking the time to read this and I hope you can make it happen. > > Best regards, > > Slau Halatyn" > > So, the above message went out to Gary Greenfield and chris Gahagan, EVP of > Avid. I also copied Rich Holmes. The letter also made its way to Ed Gray who > sent me a message. I'm sure he wouldn't mind that I post part of it below: > > "Dear Slau, > >> Your letter to Gary was passed on to me and I can’t express how much I >> appreciate it. You expressed yourself extraordinarily well and gave a >> transparent history which is essential. I know, having spoken to Rich >> since our meeting, that he is dedicated to delivering the results you are >> asking for. I will stay on top of this for you and I am your ally in >> this initiative." > > So, that's where we currently stand. We're awaiting word from the top to see > if accessibility can officially become part of the process. It would, > indeed, be the best scenario for us. If we do get a commitment, great. If > not, I won't let it drop. Gary Greenfield is unaware of my initial proposal > for a fund-raising campaign. I still feel that it would be feasible and > successful if we had to undertake it. There are those who will undoubtedly > feel that we shouldn't have to raise funds for something Avid should do on > their own dime. Yes, I agree in principle. However, it is a viable option > and, if we must go there, so be it. That's where public outreach and social > networking will be required big time. For now, we need to wait and see what > the official response from Gary Greenfield will be. Whatever the response, I > will inform him that I plan to make it public. I don't mean that as a > threat. I mean, I will ask him for a formal statement either way. I trust > that his response will be hopeful and that Avid will make a formal > commitment to action. The commitment made some years ago was on the part of > several conscientious individuals at Digidesign. It's time for Avid, as a > company, to respond. That's what I'm looking for before the next move. We'll > see how it goes from here. > > As I stated in a previous message, my personal commitment is to see this > through at least until we have a response. At that point, I'll make a > personal decision. If the response is positive, I'll continue to work with > Avid in the near future to ensure they have whatever they need in terms of > feedback, beta testing, etc. My involvement beyond that, by design, will be > minimal because, by nature, if the issue of accessibility is part of the > process, it won't require high maintenance. > > If, however, the official response is not in our favor, I will proceed with > Plan B involving possible fund-raising through KickStarter. I will only do > this if enough people on the list support me in that approach because it > will certainly require pounding the pavement. We did that before and we can > do it again. Even this approach would require Avid's approval. They may go > along with it, they may not. We'll cross that bridge if we get to it. > > Some of you might have the possibility of legal action in the back of your > mind. For the record, I'm against it at all costs. Actually, I should more > accurately say that, to me, it should be an absolute last resort. I > personally will not spearhead such an approach. It'll have to be up to > somebody else to take the reigns under such conditions. I have no experience > with such matters. Perhaps someone like Rick Boggs, who has had firsthand > experience with access-related legal action, could find the time to step in, > if necessary. Again, in my book, legal action is Plan C. Barring subtle > variations, I don't see any other major outcomes, A, B or C. > > Thanks for reading this very lengthy post. I hope it answers some questions, > perhaps it might prompt some questions. I suspect that some of the potential > questions might depend on the response from Mr. Greenfield. We'll see. > Naturally, as soon as I receive any word, I'll immediately post it here. > > Slau > >
