Implementation Considerations in Enabling Visually Impaired Musicians to Read Sheet Music Using a Tablet

In this paper, we present the issues to be addressed and the practical solutions to these issues in a mobile application framework for reading and displaying musical scores enhanced to assist the visually impaired in reading and perform the pieces. This framework, currently operating on MusicXML input files, provides the structures and methods for developers to adapt for other music encoding file formats. It also provides the flexible user-settable colors and enlargement parameters to meet the needs of users with various visual impairments. The development challenges fall into three categories: Variable visual impairment driven requirements, Musical notation complexity, and screen real-estate limitations of a 10-inch tablet. The framework's practical solutions to each of these challenges are presented and contrasted with traditional solutions and competing solutions.