Website for disabled musicians

[quent]

I am a musician with Parkinson's disease.
I am applying for a 'Create It!!' award from the Parkinson's Disease Society to establish a website for musicians with disabilities.
The site will conform to all full accessibility criteria and will furthermore be highly adaptable to user preference/need.
The aims of the site are:

to enable disabled musicians to use the internet to exchange information and ideas about hardware, software and musical instruments that enable site users to make, record and publish music
to create an online database, searchable by accessibility/postcode-proximity, of suppliers af assistive technologies
to establish a message board/forum
to publish user reviews of relevant equipment
to provide details of music workshops and courses of interest to site users
to establish a small team to manage and maintain the website

Although I have a basic grasp of web design ,
http://www.neoh.co.uk/agnesco.htm

I need training in the server-side applications side of things. Any advice or information that would help me locate funding for training, hardware or support would be very welcome

[macouno]

Ok because of personal preferences and experiences I'd say go learn PHP or find someone to do it for you.

it's not too hard to create interactive site design in it though it may take some time.

Go see www.devnetwork.net (http://www.devnetwork.net) which has a great forum/community and you can find a lot of help there. On www.newbienetwork.net (http://www.newbienetwork.net) you can find a lot of tutorials on it (part of the same network of php sites).

OH and go see one of my own messy sites, where there's some scripts you can try/study. http://alienhelpdesk.com

And I'll be happy to answer your questions too of course http://www.audioforums.com/forums/wink.gif

[quent]

Thanks for the links.
PHP is pretty daunting....but if it needs to be done then so it will be. Will listen to the mp3s

Did you check
http://www.neoh.co.uk

[macouno]

yes of course I checked the neoh site http://www.audioforums.com/forums/wink.gif

But perhaps if you create a site for people with disabilities you may want to consider skipping a lot of the javascript things and maybe even make a site with only straight html and also a few templates people can use whilst surfing.

Like a link on the index page which lets them set font size and so on. Especially since a few disabled people may not be able to see/read all that well. Or perhaps you may even want to check the special apps blind people use to browse the web... they may for instance not be able to view flash.. I'm not sure but in your case I'd look into it.

[macouno]

oh and yes PHP is daunting, but you can do an amazing variety of things even with a few basic functions.

Lemme know what you want to create and I'll try to point you in a direction http://www.audioforums.com/forums/wink.gif

[quent]

thanks for the comments.
neoh was built before the interest in accessibility.I have approached a large music charity http://www.drakemusic.com who pointed me at their new site which is still in development...it had all but a couple of the features of the sit that i wanted to build...mixed emotion time...but now the deal is that I can get training to build a page for them that includes a search for accessible recording facilities ordered by postcode proximity. The plan is to send out a mail to as many studios as possible, linking them to a simple form to establish physical accessibility and assistive tecnolgy facilities. To use the responses to create a database that can be searched via set of options in dropdown boxes to enable users to find the closest studio that meets their needs. All I need to know now is where to start. http://www.afd.co.uk have the software but it is £5000! I have to wait for my funding to come through before I start the heavy training but I would like to start to collect and organise the data. I think that the a form is the best way to collect it. Can I organise it in such a way that I can just sit back and watch the database grow without actually having to do anything? And ensure that data will work with whatever "net nearest" postcode application I end up using?

[macouno]

Well naturally there's a way, but the way you're going to search it later is rather important.

I don't exactly know how the area codes in your part of the world work but it must be possible to find something below $5000.-

yeah I looked 1500 pounds plus a huge annual renewal fee.

But actually you probably don't need anything as flash. All you need to know is what area, and then you can display studios in that area with the accessebility details.

Ehm... you could of course write it yourself.. with a little help maybe.

if you have questions.. just mail me at lc@alienhelpdesk.com