Voicemeeter accessibility for blind users

[marioloreti88]

Hi,
I am Mario, a blind italian voice talent.
I use Voicemeeter regularly for my day job because I have a Uiversal Audio Apollo sound card on Windows, and this sound card has very good preamps but also some routing limitations.

As a blind user I use my Windows 10 PC with a screen reader, a software that reads aloud the screen with a TTS voice. I use NVDA (www.nvda-project.org) that is free, but there is also Jaws (https://www.freedomscientific.com/produ ... ware/jaws/), and Voicemeeter is not usable by both of those. Basically I can only load and save presets, but only using OCR.
This happens because Voicemeeter has not accessibility features.

Now I see that if someone clicks on "A1" for example in potato, a context menù appears, and this is perfectly readable. I can't say the same for the system tray menù, and, on the Voicemeeter main screen I need to locate the menù button with OCR, but once located I can read it and, for example save or load a preset.

This means that I can't create presets alone, this also because I can't read the "system settings / options" window.
I am not mentioning the internal effects such as EQ's , compressors ecc because I don't use them, but I know that also those aren't accessible. Ah, I want to purchase a license, but I can't activate it because of the same problems.

Is it possible to see some accessibility implemented in future versions? I will be happy to test some beta, if needed.

A good starting point could be adding some keystrokes for A1, Menù ecc, because when clicked I can interact wit them but they aren't easy to locate. We often use arrow keys and tab to move between controls but they don't work in Voicemeeter.

Thanks, I know that you Vincent are already aware of this, so thanks for your consideration. In case, I'l do my best to support you.
Mario

[xcasxcursex]

Hello Mario,

Firstly let me just say, I am very impressed with your ability to use a PC like this. I experience some accessibility challenges myself, but nothing of such a magnitude. You're inspiring.

Although I cannot help to add real accessibility features to VoiceMeeter, I thought I might take a moment to make an alternative suggestion which may help you. While we mostly interface with VM through its GUI which everyone knows, VM also provides another interface, even more powerful, and from a 'visual' perspective, it is completely text-based. This is the API.

I do not know if you have much programming experience, but by using the VM API, you can control everything in your VM, you could make your own new GUI, or your own custom interface.

A collection of links that demonstrate this API in action:
Forum thread about the API:
viewtopic.php?t=346

A wrapper for the API to use it in AutoHotKey:
https://github.com/SaifAqqad/VMR.ahk
Similar wrappers exist for other languages like Go and Python, but AHK is nice as a 'taste test' because the only toolchain you need is notepad.exe

An example of a complete custom UI for VM:
https://github.com/onyx-and-iris/voicemeeter-compact

There are lots of cool toys:
https://github.com/topics/voicemeeter

This is just a quick post to suggest the idea, but if this is appropriate for your needs, you will be able to find a lot more advice to move forward. I don't post here very often (your thread is an exception to the rule) but many of us make use of the API and will be able to help out.

Hope this helps.

[marioloreti88]

Hi, many tanks for your post.
I am not a programmer but I regularly use AHK scripts to access some inaccessible programs like Native instruments Kontakt to play dsmpled sounds. Those are scripts written from others, but I save your post to see if someone that has some programming skills could help me.
Again, many thanks!

[Vincent Burel]

thanks for this thread, we have started to work on Windows accessibility functions to see how we could implement it in our GUI in the future...
we will post news about our development in progress here...

[Vincent Burel]

There is now a first solution called NVDA-Voicemeeter providing an accessible interface for blind people using NVDA:
https://github.com/onyx-and-iris/nvda-voicemeeter

VoicemeeterUIForBlindUsers.png (38.77 KiB) Viewed 21960 times