How Lydia opened up a whole world of music to touch the lives of blind people

He also invented a system to represent the symbols on printed music. Unfortunately Braille music has changed very little in nearly 200 years, and although computer applications exist to speed up the process, they are not exactly instant and – apart from a limited library of Braille music kept by the Royal National Institute for the Blind – the conversion of printed music into Braille requires individual transcription on demand, often using a special typewriter.

About eight years ago, Leeds-based Lydia Machell decided to try and change all that, when she set out to develop a computer software program that would transform music publishers' production files into Braille music, working in partnership with music publishers and producing Braille scores for distribution through an accessible website.

She uses publishers' digital scores as the starting point and now has seven major international publishers on board. This enterprise – and labour of love – is approaching something like mass-production of Braille music for the first time, and her website offers an unprecedented range of downloadable musical resources.

"The impact on visually-impaired children in music education will be considerable," says Lydia, who self-funded the long toil of developing the software while working as a freelance preparing composers' manuscripts for publication. "Now, with the choice of music no longer dictated by a limited selection of formats and styles, we can offer classical pieces, piano tutors, songs from Glee – or anything else".

Blind or visually-impaired musicians will be able to go to Machell's website (patents pending in the US and Europe), browse, listen to short samples, then pay between 2 and 5 to download the music they want and print it out on a Braille printer. Or they can buy an embossed copy to arrive within a few days.

"I don't think anyone is going to make a fortune in Braille music or any kind of music publishing, to be honest," she says. "It would be nice if it covered its costs, but money isn't why I'm doing it. It's a 'right to read' issue really. I feel very strongly that blind or partially-sighted people should have the same access to music as everyone else, and equality legislation now also dictates that they should have everything available to them that sighted people can use and enjoy."

As interesting as the fact that she has found this unusual creative and entrepreneurial niche is the story of how she got to the point of officially launching Prima Vista Braille Music Services next week. It hasn't come about through some Dragon's Den-style search for the idea that would earn her a cushy retirement, but rather from a serendipitous coming-together of personal experience, a lifelong adoration of music, a "streak of geek" and her professional expertise in dealing with the precious creations crafted by other musicians.

Born and raised in New York, and an adept choral singer and pianist from an early age, Machell studied printmaking at art college in Philadelphia, before travelling to England for one summer which (so far) has lasted 30-odd years. She met and married an Englishman, had children, worked in arts administration, continued her interest in music and even took up the cello at 40.

Today she sings in a choir, and plays cello in both a symphony orchestra and a string quartet. In the late 70s, before anyone else she knew was doing such a thing, she went to a computer programming "boot camp" – thereby sowing a seed that would bring her other interests together.

One more ingredient in the mix – and probably the most important as far as Braille music is concerned – is that Lydia Machell had no useful vision until the age of five, by which time she had had several operations on a sight problem she was born with. She still has vision in only one eye, and has to look very closely at everything.

About 15 years ago she met the composer Christopher Norton, then living in Leeds, and through him became interested in notation, using software to create printable manuscripts. She quickly became an expert in the field, and worked with a number of London publishers.

This led to an interest in customising software for "plug-ins" by writing specialist code, and from there to more projects in special add-ons to score-writing software. At around the same time a new toy came on the market – the mobile phone. Downloadable ringtones were on the horizon, but a small guide to producing your own ringtone, Ringtone Mania, fascinated her. Machell explored the idea of distilling a Sibelius score into a plug-in using the four elements used for ringtones – note, sharp, duration and octave.

Her interest in ringtones waned, but the concept of representing a very graphic musical score in a linear code still intrigued her; there had to be some useful application for it. Standing in a lift one day, pressing the buttons to go up, she noticed the raised Braille dots by the controls. That was her "Eureka!" moment.

"What started as an 'I wonder what if...' turned into an obsession," says Machell. She set other things aside to concentrate of making a piece of software that would translate a file containing a Sibelius symphony into Braille. "I also tackled the other side of the equation, and began to develop software that would enable a blind musician to create scores in both Braille and print.

Producing a Braille version of a digital score involves no extra cost to a publisher, and changing provision of Braille music from transcription on demand to transcription at source will change the volume of available scores and also the ways in which Braille music readers learn and work. Being able to browse is so important, and that's something that sighted musicians take for granted."

Chris Norton's American Popular Piano is one popular music learning series now available in Braille already using Machell's software. A blind child can complete the book at their own pace, knowing the next will be available as and when they're ready for it. Machell is continually refining the software so that one day she can market the application itself, and other plans include designing an e-learning programme. No doubt Louis Braille would heartily approve.