Towards accessible multimedia music

This paper addresses the provision of music for the print impaired in the digital age. In recent years a number of key initiatives, such as those undertaken by EC funded projects like HARMONICA and WEDELMUSIC, have opened up new opportunities in the field of interactive multimedia music. The area of music encoding is moving towards greater unification and co-ordination of effort with the activities and strategies being pursued by the Music Network. For organizations providing support and alternative format materials for print impaired people this offers the exciting challenge of bringing together several disparate activities and building a far stronger future for coding activities in this field. This paper provides an overview of the current situation; a detailed description of the key emergent themes; information about recent technical initiatives; and some insight into the activities planned for the coming years.