A successful musician and producer who happens to be blind, Jason Dasent is helping manufacturers to implement text‑to‑speech and other vital accessibility features.
Jason Dasent and his wife Sarah have become the industry’s leading consultants on accessibility.“I make light of being blind, because it could be a heavy topic,” explains Jason Dasent. “People tend to handle it in different ways. People tend to be embarrassed. British people have a thing where they say, ‘I don’t mean to be rude...’ But the nicest people, and the people I have remained lifelong friends with, are the rude people. Ask whatever you want to ask. Nothing is off limits, you know. That’s how we’re gonna break down the barriers to accessibility. I think I’m offence‑proof! I had to make myself that way, because I need to make people comfortable.”
As well as developing a career as a producer, songwriter and keyboard player, Jason has also found himself becoming the industry’s leading adviser on accessibility, working with almost all the major hardware and software manufacturers to help them make their products usable by vision‑impaired people. It is, as he acknowledges, quite a responsibility, especially as there often aren’t existing standards or conventions to guide the implementation of accessibility features.
“I’m inventing them!” he admits, “and it’s a really scary thing. Sometimes I’ll stop and think and I’ll just freeze and say, ‘I hope I’m giving people good advice. I hope I’m not leading a whole industry down the road of nonsense, my nonsense.’ But then you see a product become accessible and say, ‘OK, maybe it’s a good thing.’ But it’s really exciting, like when you have an idea and you discuss it with a software engineer and they come back to you next week: Jay, check this out.
“I’m sure there’s lots of things that people just don’t think about. If it doesn’t affect you directly, then you wouldn’t know. You have a good Samaritan situation where, for example, you may have a professor out of college and a blind student comes in. The professor has never heard anything about accessible music tech. So in the goodness of his heart, he would stay back in the afternoon after school is done with the blind student and he would say, let me put a piece of tape on the number five button, right? Which is all well and good, but that’s no longer necessary. Just because I’m blind, I don’t want my equipment to be big and clunky. Just make the technology available. Give me a sexy touchscreen that talks!
“I always say: make it possible, don’t make it easy. I want the same experience as a sighted person. I want the same learning curve.”
Memory Man
Jason’s own learning curve began early. “I was in primary school, and another student had a little keyboard. I picked it up, played a few notes and it actually sounded like music. It was close to Christmas, so guess what I got for Christmas? A little Casio keyboard. I was about nine or 10. My family kind of realised that I was a bit serious about it, you know, maybe there was something there. So my brothers and sisters and all my working siblings and everybody bought me my first synth, a Casio CZ‑101. And my brother Dane was not musical, but he was technical. He started teaching me how to program and do sound design and make little patches and stuff. One thing led to the next, and I started becoming interested in drum machines and early sequencers, the Roland MC‑50 and stuff like that.
“And there was no accessibility in those days. There was no speech. So if, for example, I wanted to bring up preset number five, I might have to do something like turn a dial 15 times. You just had to remember where things were, and I had to build a photographic memory of the layout. And then you would turn the dial 13 times and the phone would ring, or somebody would call you. I could give you lots of embarrassing moments, because I started playing with bands pretty early, from like 15 years old, and you’re doing a big gig and the crowd is hyped and ready to go, and then you hit start and nothing happens, because obviously I couldn’t see the screen, right? But anyway, I guess it built character.
Taking electronic music gear on stage has always been a particular challenge for blind musicians like Jason, because of the added potential for things to go wrong.
“So at some point along the line, computers started to talk. At least, it became affordable to get a talking computer, and things became a little bit easier, one step at a time. I started using Cakewalk and Sonar back in the day. And then Pro Tools became accessible. So one thing led to another, and I was able to build a pretty fulfilling career, doing both studio and live and even film and post and stuff.”
Jason decided that the next step in developing his musical career should be to study at college in England. He and his wife Sarah duly crossed the Atlantic, only to find that the higher education sector was really not set up for his needs. “A lot of times, people need help in terms of getting the message that accessibility in teaching and in schools and in universities and stuff like that is really important,” says Sarah. “Dealing with a visually impaired person is different from someone having a wheelchair, because at least they can see. When somebody can’t see, it’s a different thing, especially for us sighted people. We just don’t think about it, you know, and it’s something that you need to know. For example, one of the most basic things to do when a blind person comes into your programme is to just get them a layout of everything. And sometimes you just don’t know where to start, but that’s like the starting point: a layout of the space and then a layout of each unit.”
Maschine Learning
At this time, buying a new item of music technology was often an expensive gamble for Jason, because there was often no way of knowing whether he would be able to use it. “Sarah and I purchased a Native Instruments Maschine. We were in Trinidad, thousands of miles away. We had everything shipped out to us, plugged it into the computer, installed the software, opened it up, only to find out we might as well have bought a doorstop, because it was totally inaccessible. It was like a blank screen to me, because it didn’t support text to speech. So it was either sink or swim. We could have sold it and admitted defeat, but I have a little bit of programming knowledge, using a program called Keyboard Maestro. I thought, ‘OK, maybe we can build some macros. Sarah, can you help me build some macros?’ That would do something like: you execute the keyboard shortcut, the mouse moves to the Play button and clicks it.
Since demonstrating that the Maschine (centre, right) could be made accessible, Jason Dasent has worked with NI to achieve the same goal with numerous other products. He has likewise worked with Ableton and Focusrite on products like Live/Push and the Novation Circuit (centre).
“So we started working. Sarah mapped the Play button. It worked. So we then did Stop, it worked. How about we get adventurous: let’s map Record! And slowly but surely we chipped away, along with a colleague called John de la Bastide, and in about a year, we had like 600 macros done to basically control the entire program. Native Instruments got wind of it and invited us to their office in Hackney, and we went and we showed them what we did. Long story short, they were impressed and they hired us to work with them on making it accessible from the back end. Cool. So it’s now fully accessible.
“While we were on that trip, Focusrite heard about us and they called us and said, ‘Look, we’re doing the Vocaster and the new Scarlett’s coming. We want you to work with us on making the Focusrite stuff accessible.’ Then it started to spread. Ableton called us and we worked for three years with them to make Ableton Live fully accessible. Sarah was working with me to start with, and then I was able to take it on my own. So we were able to break down that barrier because a lot of people had reservations about hiring a blind person. Then Audio Modeling got in touch, then Arturia and SSL, and most recently Rhodes, and we worked with Softube to make the Console 1 and Console 1 Fader the first 100 percent accessible control surfaces. Slowly but surely, I think a barrier is being broken down.”
“When we get a piece of gear from some company that wants to become accessible, I will sit with Jason and label everything for him in a Word document,” explains Sarah. “We just go from row to row, going down. You know, first button is the scroll bars or whatever, and then we would just go right across the keyboard or drum machine, whatever it is, row by row, and just put it into a Word document. And then, because he has such an amazing memory, after a time, he remembers the layout and it makes it really easy for him to do his testing.”
“The concepts are the same, but it’s sometimes different, depending on what framework they use,” adds Jason. “Usually I don’t need to worry about that too much because that’s the engineering team’s job. A lot of stuff is built on JUCE, and that’s pretty standard, but Softube for example have their own protocol. So it would be a little bit different, but the goal is the same: what the software does, what the hardware does, what you need it to do, what you need to see. But I need to say, let’s make this talk. When you hit Record, say ‘record on’, things like that. Sometimes people attempt to do it on their own, without the experience of somebody vision impaired. They may be well‑intentioned, but if you click a Record button, they might have it say something like, ‘This is a Record button. If you press it the record function comes up.’ But all I want to hear is ‘record on’.”
Not Special
A point that Jason repeatedly emphasises is that accessibility isn’t about making it artificially easy for visually impaired people to make music. Rather, it’s about removing additional barriers, so the blind experience the same challenges as everyone else, and enjoy the same opportunities.
“You come across a lot of insecurity among visually impaired people. They would do something at home, but they wouldn’t go apply for a job. And where I grew up, in Trinidad, there was no infrastructure for visually impaired people already. It worked out for me because my mum said: ‘You know, no matter what, you have to grow up and live as a normal person. There’s nothing special about you because you’re blind.’ And that’s the best gift I’ve ever been given. ’Cause I had to go out there. I had to go and sit in front of 15 execs at an advertising agency and say, ‘I’m blind but I’m gonna score your next commercial, right?’ And it made me strong. It made me able to become who I am.
“A lot of people are buying the equipment just to use it in their bedroom, but I’m applying for jobs. People get a lot of grants and stuff like that so they can live comfortably without working, you know, but that’s not the situation for me. You work to make a living, right? Not because you’re blind or disabled. That’s that’s what life is about. That’s what makes life worth living. And I’m trying to kind of instil that culture without changing people’s beliefs. I’ve worked for everything that I have, and I’ll have it no other way. The technology is there, it’s just getting it out there to the people.”
Jason Dasent: Everyone who’s blind, mummy, daddy, auntie, uncle, says they need to do music. Why do they need to do music? Because Stevie Wonder is blind and Stevie Wonder did music.
Meanwhile, for everyone whose expectations of blind people are too low, there are others who make the opposite assumption. “That leads me to the next thing, which I call Stevie Wonder Syndrome. Everyone who’s blind, mummy, daddy, auntie, uncle, says they need to do music. Why do they need to do music? Because Stevie Wonder is blind and Stevie Wonder did music. So I have situations where there’s somebody who I teach, who is extremely intelligent, but he’s not cut out for music. But his circle, his parents, and whoever is around him, insists he must be into music because he’s blind and Stevie Wonder is blind. And that’s not an isolated case. I can’t teach him music if music is not for him.”
Hearts & Minds
Making music tech equipment truly accessible can be a big job, which ties up precious development resources. At the same time, it’s rarely glamorous, and doesn’t always offer obvious commercial benefits. Nevertheless, Jason Dasent has found that manufacturers are often very willing to invest in accessibility once he has demonstrated the possibilities of the technology. “Sarah and I always have a thing we say: inspiration, not obligation. Nobody’s obligated to do anything for you, but they can be inspired. If it’s an obligation, they’ll do the minimum just to get over the line so that they’re not doing anything illegal. But if they do it by inspiration, it’s going to be done out of love and passion, you know? I don’t know if that’s the only way, but that’s the way that I work.
Jason’s studio setup is largely keyboard‑based, and includes many of the products that he has helped to make accessible.
“I’m often sent petitions by forums and stuff. Would you please sign this petition to say that the government needs to make it mandatory? Things need to be accessible by law, right? I’m not going to sign that petition, because if you do that, you turn people off. If somebody tells me I have to do something, I’m probably not going to do it. What I would do is go to events and talk to manufacturers. And my thing is, ‘How about if we work together to make it accessible? Let’s do it together. Let’s have some fun!’ And that approach works 99 percent of the time.
“I’m learning these things, and working with people and inspiring people. Some people are more inspired than others. It’s about choosing who you want to work with, what kind of work you want to do with them, how you bring people and manufacturers together. But my thing is I want a situation where visually impaired people are employable easily. I wanna make sure that that technology is there so it can do things that can reduce the rate of unemployment. And so now we have the fully accessible studio. I can do everything from recording to mixing and mastering. The thing is just getting more brands and different companies on board so that there’s choice. So now there are a few things that are accessible in all the different categories. But what we aim for is everything to be accessible in every category.”
Accessibility is simply the key that opens the door to allow talent and musical ability to flourish.
Watching Jason Dasent at work in his fully accessible studio makes clear how text‑to‑speech has revolutionised music technology. Both Pro Tools and the other software tools he works with are adapted to talk back, reporting the function of whatever control is currently in focus. Working from a carefully constructed and consistent template, it quickly becomes obvious that the only thing slowing him down is having to explain to me what’s going on. It’s also instantly apparent that Jason’s abilities as composer, keyboard player and arranger are top‑notch. In the space of half an hour or so, he has put together a more or less complete soul track, working both with software instruments and with hybrid devices like the NI Maschine. Accessibility is simply the key that opens the door to allow talent and musical ability to flourish.