HCI researchers design for blind musicians learning string instruments

A multi-disciplinary team spanning violin performance, music education, disability studies, HCI design, and engineering set out to understand the barriers faced by musicians with blindness and low-vision (BLV) when learning bowed string instruments. Traditional teaching relies heavily on visual demonstration—showing bow angles, finger placement, and posture—which is inaccessible to BLV learners. The researchers employed a qualitative, multi-method approach: practice video analysis, lesson observations, and expert interviews with four advanced BLV string musicians and three of their instructors. This yielded a detailed map of recurring breakdowns in four core areas: right-hand bow control, left-hand coordination, real-time score access (e.g., reading braille music while playing), and memory-intensive practice routines that increase cognitive load.

Building on these findings, the team entered an exploratory design ideation phase, informed by empirical data and direct feedback from one BLV musician. They developed several speculative design directions—such as haptic bow guides, audio score readers, and vibrotactile feedback for left-hand fingering—that could potentially address the identified breakdowns. However, the authors emphasize that these concepts require further evaluation with instructors and in deployed classroom settings. The work, accepted at a top HCI venue (pending DOI), opens a new design space for accessible music education technologies, moving beyond visual augmentation to truly embodied, non-visual forms of instruction.