For Choralia, visually impaired singers constitute a special class of users that deserve specific attention and care.

Not all visually impaired singers are able to read music written in Braille. Furthermore, reading music does not imply that one also has fluent sight-singing skills: most Choralia users, even if they are not visually impaired, need Choralia’s training aids to learn how symbols on the sheet music correspond to note pitches, durations, and to memorise their part in the overall rhythm and harmony before going to group rehearsals. Visually impaired singers have the same needs, further to the problems directly related to music reading.

For singers that are completely blind Choralia can offer, in addition to the usual mp3 files with music and lyrics sung by Choralia’s “virtual singers”, other mp3 files where the lyrics are spoken using normal voice synthesis. This allows to better understand the lyrics and to improve the pronunciation when the piece is sung in a foreign language. You can listen to an example (introduction choir from “L’elisir d’amore” by Donizetti) hereinbelow.

For singers that are not completely blind, some additional options are possible. Enlarged scores may be provided, which can be readable for the singer when displayed on a very large screen monitor. Similar scores may also be provided so that the sheet music can be printed on paper and used during rehearsals and/or performance. The page layout may be optimised for printing on letter size paper (typically used in the U.S.) or on A4 size paper (typically used in other countries). An example of enlarged score for the alto part of “Personent hodie” arranged by John Rutter (A4 page size) is provided hereinbelow.

When the enlarged score is supposed to be printed and used during public performance, the layout of the score is designed so that, whenever possible, the page vaults of the enlarged score correspond to those of the normal score used by the rest of the choir. This is obtained by removing the accompaniment and the other parts from the enlarged score, so that more room is available to apply an enlarged scale to the desired part without requiring a (much) larger number of pages for the enlarged score. This is intended to prevent, as far as possible, that the visually impaired singer turns pages at a different time with respect to all the other singers, which is definitely an unpleasant effect when performing publicly. If you compare the enlarged score example provided above with the original edition of the same work (Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-343230-7), you will notice that page vaults precisely occur at the same measures.

Please do not hesitate to contact Choralia for any specific needs related to visually impaired conditions. It is worth to remark that the preparation of aids for handicapped users is copyright-exempt in most countries, so specific aids for visually impaired users can be freely made also for works that are under copyright.