[Smt-talk] Schenkerian analysis - visual impaired student

[Philip Baczewski]

Technology has replaced the need for manual embossing. Tiger Software works with 
braille embossers to create "tactile graphics" from black and white images. It 
would seem that Schenker graphs would translate well to a tactile form since 
there are visual/tactile cues that support discerning the structural levels.  We 
support a Tiger Embosser in our UNT Adaptive Technology lab and have produced 
musical scores at times for students.  For more info, see
http://www.viewplus.com/products/braille-printers/elite-braille-printers/

Philip Baczewski, D.M.A. (baczewski at unt.edu)
Deputy Chief Information Officer
University Information Technology (UIT)
University of North Texas

On 11/6/12 4:51 PM, Bennighof, James wrote:
> It's unlikely that this would prove to be a useful approach to follow on any
> continuing basis, but when I was in graduate school in the early 80s a blind
> fellow student asked me to help her by embossing a Schenker graph on a large
> piece of shelf paper (maybe four feet long); I had to draw the graph in
> reverse in pencil on the paper and then go over all the pencil markings with
> a toothed marking wheel (ordinarily used for sewing) so as to produce bumps
> on the opposite side.  When the paper was turned over, the bumps reproduced
> the graph, now unreversed.
>
> I don't remember some of the crucial details of how much she was able to
> comprehend.  I believe that she was at that point incapable of seeing
> anything distinctly--perhaps just very large (furniture- or human-sized)
> areas of darkness and light--but she must at some point (perhaps because of
> having had more sight when younger) have learned about music notation in
> general.  I think I or a faculty member probably talked her through what the
> various figures meant.  But again, this was not a long-term study of
> Schenker for her, but, I think, just something to give her a bit of a sense
> of what it was like.
>
> --Jim Bennighof
>