Dancing Dots Braille Music Technology is an American company based in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
that was founded in 1992 to develop and adapt music technology for the blind. Its founder, Bill McCann, is a blind musician. Among the products it offers are several programs that produce a musical version of
Braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...
by converting print
musical notation, allowing blind musicians access to the
scores used by their sighted counterparts. The company also offers programs that aid blind musicians in
transcribing
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of spoken language in written form. The source can either be utterances (''speech'' or ''sign language'') or preexisting text in another writing system.
Transcription shoul ...
their compositions to Braille.
Dancing Dots created the latter products to help speed the process of Braille transcription for blind composers, who might otherwise have to wait between two weeks and six months to have their compositions transcribed by one of the less than one hundred certified Braille music transcribers in the United States.
History
The company was founded in 1992 by Bill McCann, a blind
trumpeter
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard B ...
. It struggled financially in its early years in the long lead between developing technology and releasing its first product in 1997, a difficult period assisted by federal contracts beginning in 1994. In 1997, the company released its GOODFEEL Braille Music Translator to positive reviews. The product was well received, and its company was a success. In 1999, the company, which was a recipient of a
Small Business Innovation Research
The Small Business Innovation Research (or SBIR) program is a U.S. government funding program, coordinated by the Small Business Administration, intended to help certain small businesses conduct research and development (R&D). Funding takes the f ...
Grant, was part of a display of
assistive technology at the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
.
In 2000, Dancing Dots released CakeTalking for SONAR,
JAWS scripts and tutorials that provide access to
Cakewalk Sonar, a
digital audio workstation
A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrat ...
, for blind or visually impaired users.
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]
Products and services
Dancing Dots maintains a website at which it markets its products, as well as related and complementary products by other companies.
With GOODFEEL combined with a few mainstream products, sighted musicians can prepare a Braille score with no knowledge of braille. Music scanning software can be used to speed up data entry. Blind users can make sound recordings and print and Braille editions of their compositions.
Dancing Dots is also the publisher of several courses to assist blind musicians, including ''An Introduction to Music for the Blind Student: A Course in Braille Music Reading'' and ''An Introduction to the Piano for the Blind Student''.
References
External links
Official Website
{{writing systems
Computer companies of the United States
Computer hardware companies
Companies based in Philadelphia
Musical notation
Braille