My song Man with Small F (The Inaccessible PDF Song), originally released on my Flow Theory Flavors album, is now featured on a compilation album called A11y Rocks!
Man with Small F features a screen reader on vocals, trying but failing to make sense of a PDF document that wasn’t created properly for accessibility. There’s more of a back-story, plus lyrics, on the Man With Small F Liner Notes page. Screen readers are tools used by blind computer users, enabling them to access computer-based information and applications via synthesized speech rather than a screen. The most popular screen reader is a product called JAWS (Job Access with Speech), which costs consumers over $1000 plus hundreds more for each major upgrade, released about once per year. For decades blind computer users (the most disproportionately underemployed of all minority groups) have had to pony up or be left behind.
But now there’s a new kid on the block, NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access). It’s an open source screen reader that was developed by a couple of blind guys in Australia, and is available for free. All proceeds from the sale of A11y Rocks! go to accessibility-related causes, including NV Access, to support continued development of NVDA. The album is only £3 (under $5 at today’s exchange rate) and you get a dozen cool tunes in addition to my own, plus you’ll be supporting a worthy and much-needed project
Check out the A11y Rocks! website for additional info. And thanks for supporting accessibility! Rock on!