BMML: Braille Music Markup Language

摘要

Thanks to the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) guidelines for producing accessible HTML documents, visuallyimpaired people can have better access to a lot of textual information. Concerning musical score, several encodingformats are available, focusing on the representation of different aspects of this kind of content. As XML is the standardfor exchanging content through the Web, several XML applications have already been specified for representing musicalscores, using the traditional music notation. As a result, users can access and share a lot of different types of musical contentusing the Web. However, for specific notations – like the Braille one - no dedicated XML application has been developedyet. Therefore, visually impaired musicians cannot easily represent, share, and access scores using the Web. Thispaper 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. Themain objective of BMML is to improve the accessibility of Braille musical scores.