In August, Sydney Chamber Choir sang at a concert celebrating the 75th birthday of composer Ross Edwards. On the program was a commissioned piece called Let Them All Come. The words by First Dog on the Moon about asylum seekers are daring and poignant, while the musical setting by Josephine Gibson is intricately beautiful. Under my hands, Let Them All Come shaped itself into a braille score. As a blind musician, I used this to learn my part, and I had it with me as I sang.

Ria Andriani reading braille

Both Josie and I are members of Sydney Chamber Choir. The exchange of scores took place over our messenger app. In the message thread, she explained that she had extracted my part and converted it to Music XML. Several importations through Goodfeel suite software later, I was ready to navigate my way through the broken words, cutting and pasting lines to make my braille score.

I lost my sight at the age of five through Congenital Glaucoma. Growing up in an Indonesian special education setting, I’ve always been encouraged to sing and learn braille and...