Christine Sun Kim gave a TED talk entitled The Enchanting Music of Sign Language. Initially, I found that the title alone seemed to be quite oxymoronic. Music inherently, to me, is an auditory art form. You have to hear the sounds of music to properly experience it. Coming from Christine Sun Kim’s perspective, sound is not necessarily the only component one can consider when listening to music. While for those who experience the auditory stimulation of listening to music, it is easy to take for granted audio, Christine says that the way she experiences sounds comes from observing other peoples reactions and the emotions evoked when they here the sounds.
In this regard, what I got out of listening to her speech was the response to the audio is just as important as the audio itself. It kind of reminded me of the death of the author idea brought by Roland Barthes. He posits the notion that once a work of art is published, the intention behind the work is less important than the response of those who consume the work of art. Good art, in my view, is when the intention and the response align. Artists or sound engineers (even coders) have to have a very keen awareness of how human emotions can be triggered when exposed to certain stimulants. They need to have empathy and the foresight to predict how people will respond to their art.
TL;DR: empathy is a necessary trait for artists.