01 Feb, 2010, triskaledia wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I was wondering how many other people out there have ran into users that are partially or completely blind. I've ran into 1 partially blind user, and 2 completely blind user. I've tried thinking of things that would/could make the playability easier for them, but I couldn't come up with any idea's, and they seemed content to just "bump" their way around the world listening to their word decipher - one of them referred me to JAWS, complementing their system, but said it costs too much. So, I guess what I'm getting around to are some idea's to code that could make a blind users life easier.
02 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
A quick grep of my pfiles shows that exactly 600 (out of 12054) are using my 'screen reader' config option - and a few days ago I was talking to a prominent player who told me that he's blind, but doesn't use the config option, instead preferring his own setup.

However I've put quite a bit of effort into accessability features, and have even advertised on sites for blind gamers.
02 Feb, 2010, Orrin wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Like KaVir we've had quite a few blind users and it's possible to make things easier for them without too many modifications. Some of the things we've done to help blind players as configuration options:

1. Where colour is used to indicate gameplay information it's replaced with a # character .
2. Removing the prompt and implementing commands to display just the individual stats when required.
3. Options for full, brief or no room descriptions.
4. Listing the room contents above the room name and desc so they are read first by a reader (useful when chasing people down!)
5. Formatting long lists of information as one item per line rather than as a paragraph (apparently it's easier in a reader to tab down lines than go through a paragraph of text).

Oh and of course removing any kind of ASCII art or maps or tabular formatting.
02 Feb, 2010, Scandum wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
A blind friendly map could:

1) Give a list of all locations on the map.
2) Provide a description of what surrounds a location

For example:

>look at locations on worldmap
Locations are Island of Paragon, Volcano Island, Refuge Tribe, City of Entropy, Valdemar, and Ofcol.

>look at Island of Paragon on worldmap
North of the Island of Paragon lies Volcano Island, west lies Refuge Tribe, south lies the city of Entropy, and east lies Valdemar.

This would give blind players a fairly decent way to get an idea of the layout of the world.
02 Feb, 2010, Kline wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
My base has very rudimentary support for blind players that was pre-existing before I started work. One of the most notable (IMO) is keeping prompts off or very simple. Most game prompts are a mixture of symbols and numbers, when I was experimenting with the mode for myself it changed my default prompt to read "Health 50 Mana 10 Move 15" or similar. I think KaVir has the most effort invested into this area so far though.
02 Feb, 2010, Kjwah wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Orrin said:
1. Where colour is used to indicate gameplay information it's replaced with a # character .
2. Removing the prompt and implementing commands to display just the individual stats when required.
3. Options for full, brief or no room descriptions.
4. Listing the room contents above the room name and desc so they are read first by a reader (useful when chasing people down!)
5. Formatting long lists of information as one item per line rather than as a paragraph (apparently it's easier in a reader to tab down lines than go through a paragraph of text).

Oh and of course removing any kind of ASCII art or maps or tabular formatting.


I have to say I never thought of doing even one of those. Good ideas, I hadn't realized that there were blind MUDders out there. However, I've still yet to run into a blind MUDder(Or gamer for that).
02 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Kjwah said:
However, I've still yet to run into a blind MUDder(Or gamer for that).

How would you know, though? Most of them don't announce that they're blind, it was only when I started implementing features that were extremely difficult for blind players to navigate that one of them contacted me, and only once I started actively developing accessability features that more of them started giving feedback.
02 Feb, 2010, Kjwah wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Kjwah said:
However, I've still yet to run into a blind MUDder(Or gamer for that).

How would you know, though? Most of them don't announce that they're blind, it was only when I started implementing features that were extremely difficult for blind players to navigate that one of them contacted me, and only once I started actively developing accessability features that more of them started giving feedback.


Well, I know I haven't because I've never made any of my games publicly available for play as I never cared about players I just liked writing code(Not to say that I haven't ran across any on some graphical games I play but I don't imagine them playing too many first person shooters?).

However, I'll be taking these things into consideration on my new project that I'm working on after reading some of your posts on the subject(And the others in this thread).
02 Feb, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Kjwah said:
KaVir said:
Kjwah said:
However, I've still yet to run into a blind MUDder(Or gamer for that).

How would you know, though? Most of them don't announce that they're blind

Well, I know I haven't because I've never made any of my games publicly available for play

So in fact you could argue that you've yet to run into any mudders, blind or otherwise ;)

But presumably you've played on other people's muds in the past? The point I'm trying to make is that it can be very difficult to work out if a player is blind, because in most cases they can play just as well as a sighted player, and it's not the sort of personal information they'll usually volunteer.

And in answer to your other comment, yes, blind players can play first-person shooters as well.
02 Feb, 2010, Lyanic wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Wasn't there already a thread about blind MUD players/improving accessibility for blind MUD players? It was just last year…
02 Feb, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
There are several threads on several forums about the question of how to help support blind players, yes. There are many things that can be done, both on the server side and the client side. The MUSHclient forums have discussion of this from the client's perspective, whereas most discussion here has been from the game's perspective (not terribly surprising, perhaps).
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