Accessibility for blind and visually impaired people

The only way a blind person using screen reader can use Roon is the Roon Web Controller. You need to install the Roon extension Manager and install the Roon Web Controller extension from the Roon Controler, settings and extensions. I use Roon like that and I am blind. Unfortunately, the sight personn must install Roon Web Controller becouse Roon Controller is inaccesible.
Best regards and good luck Robert Tota

Hi Robert and all,

what about the features of the web access plugin? I use 'Qobuz and / or Tidal most of the time and have no big local library. Can I

  • search the streaming services for specific artists, records or titles with the plugin?
  • manage favourite artists and records with the plugin?
  • discover new music through the streaming services with this plugin?
  • use the great new features of Roon to discover new music with this plugin (artist based radio, e.g.)?

If this all would be possible I’d give it a try.

As said, it would be OK to setup and configure Roon with sighted help. If I can use the software after everything is installed. I checked the Github page of the web plugin to get a more detailed overview of the features of the plugin, but it is not clear to me if the things mensioned above are possible.

How to you use the plugin, what is possible and what key features of Roon are not implemented?

Cheers and thanks,

Schoepp

That’s how you can search Tidal and Qobuz to search for songs, CDs, artists we are interested in. Unfortunately, it is not possible to check the quality of the song, whether it is 16 bit or 24, resolution or is in the MQA version. Unfortunately, you can’t create your own playlists or mark artists in some way, or add them to your favorites. It is possible to search music types. And probably not much more. I have a large local library and mainly use it. Roon Radio can be started. As far as I know it is based on songs from my library but maybe I’m wrong.
Regards Robert

Want to add my voice here. I found this when I posted another thread about it:

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It is very unfortunate that people have to deal with various disabilities. I think companies should do what they can to make their products accessible and usable to people with disabilities. However, I also think it is unreasonable to think any and every product brought to market must be usable by anyone, anywhere, with any disability. Roon does not work very well for the deaf either.

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There is a lot to unpack here.

Are you saying that because users with a hearing impairment cannot fully experience the result of using Roon that visually impaired users (who very much can) should also not be able to?

With regards to software, it is absolutely reasonable to expect it to be accessible as every software development tool used to develop UI that is worth its salt these days have built in support for accessibility. The knowledge bases and guidelines on how to achieve it are out there and most are free.

In fact this is expected to such a degree that many countries are now taking digital accessibility up into their legislation for example the ADA in America and the European accessibility act.

If Roon was accessible to visually impaired people you would not notice any negative impact in your experience of the program, so why not grant as many people as possible the same enjoyment? In fact interfaces employing the entire gamut of accessibility features have proven themselves to also be more user friendly even to users without disabilities as well, so you may even benefit from it yourself.

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Please do not try to speak for me. I can do that myself.

I already said I think companies should do what they can to make their products accessible and usable to people with disabilities.

On the other hand, Roon is a small company, which means there are limits on what they can do. They are not Microsoft or Apple. If they could implement features that make Roon usable for the blind that would be great, but not if the price of Roon becomes unaffordable for everyone. That would serve no useful purpose.

Making Roon useable for blind people should take priority over all other development, it is just not acceptable to exclude a group of people who quite possibly need music more than those of us who can see. Forget all the things I have moaned about, forget all the other complaints, forget pandering to the pernickety and cool new features, just give blind folk a useable product. Anything less is not acceptable.

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I’m sure Roon could add a variety of ADA specific features. That is at a cost. An extra $50 per year per annual subscriber should cover it.

Do you beleive there would be support for that price increase.

I think I’m on the same page with @Jim_F If it can be accomplished, that’s great, but it shouldn’t take over the focus (or long range delvelopment) of the program.

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I questioned a statement you made. Where did I speak for you?

And as for small companies I freelance for a small company, we are a development team of 4 people and our software works with screen readers. It’s a fallacy to think that only large players can achieve this.

No, you made a statement that I did not make, and attributed it to me.

The feature request has been posted and I’m sure Roon can and will evaluate the merits and put it on their roadmap as appropriate, if feasible.

FWIW I made a statement in my original post that Roon is inaccessible not an insistence that it be implemented. I also believe that software can and should be accessible. Whether or not Roon chooses to pick up on this is up to their dev team.

As for whether we should speak about a dollar amount I just don’t know. The software is obviously blocked by architecture to become accessible. Had a different choice been made at inception it would be a non issue.

On the one hand making it accessible would lead to more people being able to subscribe and more income flowing in. On the other hand it is a mega job and will cost a dollar amount in man hours. Once again only Roon will know if this makes sense to them to do.

But I am pretty sure no one is going to get a $50 increase. That’s not how these things work. The biggest possibility is that it will not be done, but then at least I have said my peace about it.

The $50 increase was sarcasm. ADA improvement that can accomplished should be attempted, but it should not be the focus of the devs anymore than necessary to reasonably acoomodate. I used to be an employer who addressed reasonable accomodation. There’s a reason the word reasonable is used to address accomodations.

I was aware that it was a theoretical amount, but sarcasm or not, team effort gets translated into user cost. But everyone here can rest assured that Roon wont up their subs by a large amount to support users with visual impairments. Cause then a lot of people will leave and the software will die.

As for ADA, I used it as an example of legislation. I, myself, am not American. And there seems to exist this idea that you build software and then you have to go do a lot of work to make it accessible. That is certainly true in this case, but because accessibility was not taken into account from the get go.

If you choose to incorporate accessibility right from the design phase it means that you are creating new features in an accessible way. So you create the accessible and the, well, “non-accessible” version at the same time, usually within the same time frame. So will all due respect, the argument that it should not have the focus holds no water because, like security, accessibility is a feature of the solution you create, not a bolt on later.

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Roon already exist. Making it accessible for the blind would probably be a very expensive task. I’m suspect Roon is not going to eat the cost to do this. Only they can determine that and the feature request has been made.

Roon already exist. Making it accessible for the blind would probably be a very expensive task. I suspect Roon is not going to eat the cost to do this. Only they can determine that and the feature request has been made.

That is true, but every specification added costs money. As someone who works in the aerospace field, this is painfully obvious.

One way to make a cross platform app that behaves consistently across very disparate operating systems is to abandon the OS level parts and do all the UI control yourself. This means that the OS specific stuff is much more simple. You just have to open a window that lets you display your content and capture user clicks. OS changes over time impact you less as well so maintenance is easier.

If accessibility was a requirement, then this path is cut off from them. So they would have to have a much deeper level of OS interaction in the remotes. This means that they need more expertise in each OS. It also fundamentally changes the way they send and receive data to and from the remotes. It’s hard to imagine that this additional requirement would not have slowed development and increased cost. The result if Roon even would have existed under this new requirement is that fewer platforms would be supported or the product would be less polished than it is today.

The sad reality is that these sorts of trades are done every day. When we built our house, we didn’t include wheelchair accessible showers. We have just limited the pool of future buyers for this house, but it was clearly the right decision.

Sheldon

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@Sheldon_Stokes, I am very aware of the reason that Roon chose OpenGL.

I hope it is clear, though, just how large the group of affected people are. This thread talks about persons who are blind. But screen readers are also used by people with low vision or who have reading and learning difficulties such as dyslexia. The lack of keyboard support hits an even wider crowd. A vast amount of people cannot or choose not to use a mouse. The group of people possibly affected by this amounts to over 40 million people in the US alone (https://www.interactiveaccessibility.com/accessibility-statistics). Can’t help to wonder how many of them would subscribe to Roon if is was the best accessibility offering out there…

As for the technical bit, there are currently four remote versions. And there are other ways of re-using code bases to manage multiple UI versions, even mobile, for example Xamarin, Native Script and React Native. There is even the option of rendering everything as HTML and using a built in browser or a webview or just run it in the actual browser like Plex does. Something does not have to be inaccessible to be maintainable.

On top of that if the tech chosen to render the UI dictates the database logic engine and the network communication then there are some serious errors in the architecture of the software. Separating concerns is software architecture 101.

This is all just spitballing, though. I’ve thought about it al of ten minutes and every single one will come with its own challenges. But so does OpenGL. That version also did not fall out of the sky in an afternoon.

But I want to be clear: I am not trying to lecture Roon here, I am responding to the points in your reply. I am still going to subscribe to Roon as it works well for my own purposes.

As for your house. I am very glad you like it. I truly am. A good home is a great thing, especially in these times. However there is a difference between someone in a wheelchair not being able to buy that specific house vs millions even billions of people being denied proper digital service delivery. And yeah here I mean wider than Roon but also including Roon.

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I’m a life-long music lover and audiophile who has enjoyed a lifetime Roon subscription since 2018. Roon just keeps getting better! One of my audiophile pals, a discerning music lover with a string of fabulous playback systems, has never tried Roon because he is completely blind. When I remarked that overcoming this barrier must be very complex technically, he informed me that it was actually quite simple and many platforms provide it. It involves prompting for control actions with sound (automated voice) in place of visible buttons. Since Roon has become so well and deservedly established, perhaps it’s time to pose this question: Is Roon now able and willing to accommodate music lovers with visual impairments? Thank you for your consideration!

As this is (now) in the feature suggestions it would be useful if the posters on the thread voted.

And if anyone has a free vote they might show some solidarity with our blind and visually impaired music loving brethren.

.sjb