BMML: Braille Music Markup Language

Abstract

Thanks to the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) guidelines for producing accessible HTML documents, visually impaired people can have better access to a lot of textual information. Concerning musical score, several encoding formats are available, focusing on the representation of different aspects of this kind of content. As XML is the standard for exchanging content through the Web, several XML applications have already been specified for representing musical scores, using the traditional music notation. As a result, users can access and share a lot of different types of musical content using the Web. However, for specific notations – like the Braille one - no dedicated XML application has been developed yet. Therefore, visually impaired musicians cannot easily represent, share, and access scores using the Web. This paper presents the application we have developed to respond to this need: BMML (Braille Music Markup Language). BMML handles specificities of Braille Music notation and takes into account the core features of existing formats. The main objective of BMML is to improve the accessibility of Braille musical scores.