Dear community, I’m new here, keen to advance/begin improving my very basic accoustic guitar playing, but being blind, I need audio descriptions/teaching. The IOS JustinGuitar app is completely inaccessible with VoiceOver, which is the standard apple accessibility feature for the blind. It doesn’t even allow access to the initial login details, which is a standard app feature. Can anyone notify JustinGuitar about the basic app failings for blind access, and I’d be incredibly grateful if anyone can direct me to a source of videos where finger positioning and strumming techniques are described well? Best regards, Brian from the North of the UK
1 Like
Hi Brian,
As prolific a teacher as he is, Justin is one guy with a small team of helpers, and a third party that makes the app - that might be why some of the app features bigger developers have in their apps aren’t in his (e.g. accessibility with voiceover).
You might want to check out his website, which you might find better suited. The same videos are there, and most lessons are also written out in text (although there are images & diagrams too). It’s free.
Grade 1 is at: https://www.justinguitar.com/classes/beginner-guitar-course-grade-one
And module 1, linked from that page is at: https://www.justinguitar.com/modules/a-d-chords-play-your-first-song
I’m not sure how all the lessons would go for you, the first lesson - the D chord - contains a text description of where to put your fingers, and he usually describes what he is doing in the videos as well.
Brilliant, I will try the web site for sure. The Thirdparty app developers need informing about their basic app failing to allow login access for VoiceOver users. No doubt all their other apps are lacking basic access too. I appreciate Justin has limitted resources, but I’m sure he’d want equal access for all of his audience, which hopeully can be improved if the Thhirdparty app company realises what their user requirements are.
Anyway, I’ll try the web site links as you’ve kindly suggested, thanks for your time with this!! Perhaps there are other blind guitar players in this community who can also suggest other resources?
Regards
Brian
1 Like
Sharing a personal story :
I teach Android mobile app development and accessibility is a strong focus in my course.
It’s true that most students are not aware of accessibility and it’s at school that we have to teach them the concept.
I teach my student that’s it’s really easy to add VoiceOver support for your app as the phone operating system does most of the job.
Therefore, my student learn that they have no excuse to not add it in any of their project and they will loose points in the exam if they do forget.
Android puts red errors in your code when your screen does not have VoiceOver text descriptions. And you can quickly fix it with a button in Android Studio.
Hopefully, iOS works the same and @MusopiaApps can work on it. 
While this does not have anything to do with JG 3rd party app or the difficulties your are having with it, I think it’s totally kick ass that you are going for it and trying to rock out on the guitar. Right on Brother. That shows a lot of fortitude and is punk rock as hell. I can not wait until you overcome this obstacle and start jamming more. Please, I really hope that you keep us updated. I would absolutely love to hear more about your cool journey as I am a learning as well and everyones experiences has value.
2 Likes