The Accessibility Helper
This is a small program that allows the Maschine software to announce what is happening. You need to load this program before you load the main Maschine 2 program from now on.
When the Accessibility Helper finishes loading you should hear it announce “Accessibility Helper Ready. For help, go to the Accessibility Helper window and press H”. This message tells you that the Helper is ready for you to load Maschine 2.
Now load Maschine 2—you will know when Maschine 2 has fully loaded, because you should hear the Helper announce either “Maschine Mk3 is connected.” or “Maschine Plus is connected.”, which means that everything is working as it should and that you are ready to start creating some music. You might also hear your screen-reader announce “Maschine 2 – New Project”, or something similar.
When the Accessibility Helper is in the foreground, you can use the following keys on your computer keyboard:
The Up and Down arrow keys move you from zone to zone of the controls on your Maschine controller. Each zone is a block of controls dedicated to particular kinds of operations.
The Left and Right Arrow keys will move you from control to control within the zone you are focused on. This is really useful when you want to find out what functions your Screen Buttons or Pads are currently assigned to. These keys will also announce the name of the available shifted functions for each control if you hold down the Shift key on the controller while you move left and right.
The Helper will use the following words to describe the state of controls:
“On” or “Off” means that the named control is active, or not.
“Unassigned” means that the control does nothing.
If you have some vision and want to make things larger, just maximize the Helper window with the normal key combination for your operating system, then use the Minus and Equals keys on the number row of your keyboard to adjust the font size.
Pressing the T key on your computer keyboard toggles the Tour Mode. When Tour Mode is active you can get a little more descriptive information as you arrow around the Accessibility Helper display. Please note that Tour Mode does not stop any button presses, knob turns, etc. from getting through to Maschine 2 and affecting your project.
Pressing H announces a help message that describes the Accessibility Helper. Once the message has finished speaking, or if you press any key, you will be returned to normal Helper operation.
Pressing the Space Bar toggles the announcement of any messages from a particular zone. This allows you to reduce the amount of speech output as your understanding of Maschine grows.
Pressing the Return (Enter) key will announce the contents of the current zone.