Approaches to Making Live Code Accessible in a Mixed-Vision Music Ensemble

The Fil Laptop Orchestra, aka FiLOrk, is an electronic music ensemble that performs through live coding, i.e. collaboratively editing in a shared document to generate sound. In forming FiLOrk, we set out to use music performance and tactile graphics to address a lack of accessible tools and curricula for teaching Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) people to code. In this poster, researchers and the high school members of FiLOrk, who use screen readers and magnification, report their experiences composing and performing two original works that incorporate assistive technologies. We discuss a shift from instruction to open-ended experimentation, and we highlight technical and pedagogical opportunities for making live coding more accessible.