Thanks to community member Slau Halatyn for letting us know that Avid will be receiving the 2016 Access Award by The American Foundation For The Blind.  Many of you out there may not be aware that Avid work very closely with blind users to ensure that Pro Tools is accessible to the blind through the built in screen reader app VoiceOver in Mac OS X.

Avid have clearly focused a lot of positive energy into supporting blind users.  The blind community can only be a very small percentage of the Pro Tools user base so it's great to see accessibility is not a mere feature request but rather the difference between being able to use the software or not.

Alongside Avid - Glinda Hill, ITNAmerica, Netflix and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) will also be honoured with The 2016 Access Awards for their commitments to innovation and access for all.  You can read the full story here.

Being a partially sighted Pro Tools user myself I can only also commend Avid for their efforts.  I have used Pro Tools for over 10 years and have always found it to be "visually" easy to use.  I wrote an article sometime ago titled Being Partially Sighted And Using Pro Tools that lists my methods in aiding myself with my poor eyesight in my recording studio.

In 2014 Avid posted an articled titled Making DAW Software Accessible for Blind and Visually Impaired Audio Engineers and Musicians.  This is a real life story and journey of Slau Halatyn, a gentleman with a visual impairment.  He talks about how he has used Pro Tools with his sight condition.

Congratulations Avid on your well deserved award.