In an effort to improve their experience, administrators have developed a new curriculum and a state-of-the-art lab to go along with it. A former and current student, both of whom are blind, are running this summer’s pilot program, which will be offered as a for-credit Berklee class starting in the fall.

Bob Mulvey, the associate director and disabilities service coordinator at Berklee’s Counseling and Advising Center, says:

\"We’re really just trying to give students with blindness or visual disabilities the same opportunities as sighted students. We’ve always had blind students and they’ve always had a positive experience at Berklee, but it hasn’t been equal to the sighted students. We want to give them as many options, musically, as we can.\"

For several years, both students and administrators like Mulvey had advocated for increased access for blind students, but they had seen little progress.

That changed in the spring of 2009, when the school brought in consultants for a daylong seminar on music study for blind students. After that meeting, Mulvey’s office spent six months planning a proposal for the pilot program. When Berklee’s president, Roger Brown, gave his approval, the team immediately began working, and barely a year after the initial meeting blind students now gather to read music for the first time.