Australian multimedia artist Fayen d’Evie recently asked me to compose a written piece for her experimental 3-Ply Imprint. The only parameters she gave me were to use my “rhythmic chops” to exploit the glitches in screen reading and assistive technology. In other words, take the sounds the software I use to navigate the internet makes when it encounters something that wasn’t designed with accessibility in mind and make something fun out of the madness. You can read my preface below and listen to Percussuation on the 3-Ply site.

Preface to Percussuation

I have always found it fascinating when people have told me that I should incorporate the sound of my screenreader in my music. The screenreader, which allows me to access everything from email to Facebook to audio editing software, is with me every day. It might as well be a voice in my head because I’m always working on earbuds—often requiring a physical nudge to return to the outside world. I’ve been operating this way since I was about 12 years old. I hear the sounds of my screenreader so frequently that I personally struggle to find anything interesting about the speech pumping into my brain. However, I can grasp the fact that the sound of a robot narrating the contents of a computer or phone screen at breakneck speed could be disorienting for sighted folks not used to relying on machines for such tasks. Screenreading technology has unlocked many doors to participation for us blind folks, but automatic access is far from a given. I have held down corporate jobs, currently manage my own business affairs as a freelance musician and artist, and have gone through many years of school, all independently, but there are some days that I spend up to three hours just trying to input a simple payment or submit a simple form because many companies are not building their digital products with screenreader accessibility in mind. And so, as with much meaningful art, pain is the inspiration too for this piece of aural madness. In what you are about to experience, I have tried to use my abilities as a drummer, composer and screenreader user to arrange the sounds of malfunction I frequently experience into a pseudo-musical form. You will (hopefully) experience rhythms and dare I say a bit of structure (or at least a collection of motifs), but most definitely you will hear the sound of a screenreader struggling to keep up with something designed to trick it. I personally enjoy listening to this piece using JAWS for Windows, my screenreader of choice, but it will work
equally well on any free built-in screenreader. I should probably include a trigger warning because visually impaired users will probably find this experience
horrifyingly similar to moments of their daily lives. If you’re not a screenreader user and you’re on an iPhone, turn on voiceover in accessibility settings,
and let it rip.