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I wonder how difficult it would be to adapt this game to read the text adventure out loud and allow visually impaired kids to play it. The author here has done

I wonder how difficult it would be to adapt this game to read the text adventure out loud and allow visually impaired kids to play it. The author here has done tremendous work into the mechanics of a text-based game, and I think it would be a relatively small task to port it to an "audio-based" game. Every year I volunteer at as event at the University of North Carolina CS department called Maze Day. Students build games, which blind and handicapped children come and play on certain day. I think the children that visit in this event would LOVE a game like this, if it became accessible.

DigitalJack 9y ago
I don't think that would be difficult. In fact I think it would have a side benefit of improving the design of a text game... you could work on developing it with your eyes closed and the quality of the descriptions would become more apparent
c22 9y ago
Back when I played (text-based) MUDs I knew several blind players who played using screen readers. Some MUDs had features to support this, e.g. ability to disable extended descriptions. The savvy players wrote scripts that processed the text to extract the most important data during movement and combat. Some of them were quite good in player vs player.
throwaway7645 9y ago
Taustation is a neat scifi text adventure that's under active development. They do regular blog posts on a variety of topics from gameplay, UI, artwork. They've made it a big point to make sure it is as friendly as possible to visually impaired individuals. I'm not sure about support for blind individuals though.
tarboreus 9y ago
Blind dev here and I played through it. Might need a touch up here and there but it's moderately accessible as-is. Text-based games are great for VI people.
- filiph 9y ago
  Author here. I'm surprised (and very happy!) you were able to play through. I know accessibility is one thing I haven't given enough attention to. If you have specific suggestions for improvement, I'm all ears. I'm getting feedback that as the game grows, it'll need a map. Are there any best practices for map navigation for blind people?
  - davidkuhta 9y ago
    Not an expert in visual impairments but this discussion made me curious. It seems like 'tactile drawings' is a related phrase/concept. Here was a cool guide for using gimp and photoshop to produce them. https://wiki.vcu.edu/display/texturepalettehapticslab/Developing+Tactile+Diagrams+with+Electronic+Drawing+Programs+Using+a+Validated+Texture+Palette https://wiki.vcu.edu/display/texturepalettehapticslab/Develo...
    - euyyn 9y ago
      I had never thought of the need to remove perspective. Interesting!
  - tarboreus 9y ago
    Hey, sorry, don't check my responses very often, but reach out to me at pa tr ick sm yth0 1 @ gmail.com if you want to talk accessibility. I'm partially sighted so I cheated a bit when I played through the first time, but just fired up NVDA and could play fairly easily, though some things could be improved. Was happy to see you used alt text for images and some semantic markup that makes landmarks on the page, good stuff.
- brlewis 9y ago
  If you have a few minutes please try my very early prototype text game at lab.brlewis.com and let me know if you see similar touch ups needed there.
  - tarboreus 9y ago
filiph 9y ago
Author here. At one point I made a big pivot towards just text + options. Before, I had complicated systems for what I called Forms (basically, minigames). Once you have only text + options, that's when you need to start thinking about player agency and repetitiveness. So I'm glad I did that because otherwise I'd have made a bad version of Sorcery! instead of what Vermin is today. That said, it's always tempting to add more functionality and UI. For example, both beta testers and then players noted how hard it was to orient oneself in the game. This would be solved by a map (perhaps in a sidebar) but then this makes the game less accessible again. Still pondering what the best way is.
sdrothrock 9y ago
I actually thought the same thing, and wondered if it would somehow be possible to automate this kind of transliteration (?) of existing games to a text format... if you could somehow automate the author's thought/abstraction process to generate a text game from an existing game, this could be a HUGE boost for people who need screen readers.

DigitalJack 9y ago

I don't think that would be difficult. In fact I think it would have a side benefit of improving the design of a text game... you could work on developing it with your eyes closed and the quality of the descriptions would become more apparent

c22 9y ago

Back when I played (text-based) MUDs I knew several blind players who played using screen readers. Some MUDs had features to support this, e.g. ability to disable extended descriptions. The savvy players wrote scripts that processed the text to extract the most important data during movement and combat. Some of them were quite good in player vs player.

throwaway7645 9y ago

Taustation is a neat scifi text adventure that's under active development. They do regular blog posts on a variety of topics from gameplay, UI, artwork. They've made it a big point to make sure it is as friendly as possible to visually impaired individuals. I'm not sure about support for blind individuals though.

tarboreus 9y ago

Blind dev here and I played through it. Might need a touch up here and there but it's moderately accessible as-is. Text-based games are great for VI people.

filiph 9y ago
Author here. I'm surprised (and very happy!) you were able to play through. I know accessibility is one thing I haven't given enough attention to. If you have specific suggestions for improvement, I'm all ears. I'm getting feedback that as the game grows, it'll need a map. Are there any best practices for map navigation for blind people?
- davidkuhta 9y ago
  Not an expert in visual impairments but this discussion made me curious. It seems like 'tactile drawings' is a related phrase/concept. Here was a cool guide for using gimp and photoshop to produce them. https://wiki.vcu.edu/display/texturepalettehapticslab/Developing+Tactile+Diagrams+with+Electronic+Drawing+Programs+Using+a+Validated+Texture+Palette https://wiki.vcu.edu/display/texturepalettehapticslab/Develo...
  - euyyn 9y ago
    I had never thought of the need to remove perspective. Interesting!
- tarboreus 9y ago
  Hey, sorry, don't check my responses very often, but reach out to me at pa tr ick sm yth0 1 @ gmail.com if you want to talk accessibility. I'm partially sighted so I cheated a bit when I played through the first time, but just fired up NVDA and could play fairly easily, though some things could be improved. Was happy to see you used alt text for images and some semantic markup that makes landmarks on the page, good stuff.
brlewis 9y ago
If you have a few minutes please try my very early prototype text game at lab.brlewis.com and let me know if you see similar touch ups needed there.
- tarboreus 9y ago

filiph 9y ago

Author here. At one point I made a big pivot towards just text + options. Before, I had complicated systems for what I called Forms (basically, minigames). Once you have only text + options, that's when you need to start thinking about player agency and repetitiveness. So I'm glad I did that because otherwise I'd have made a bad version of Sorcery! instead of what Vermin is today. That said, it's always tempting to add more functionality and UI. For example, both beta testers and then players noted how hard it was to orient oneself in the game. This would be solved by a map (perhaps in a sidebar) but then this makes the game less accessible again. Still pondering what the best way is.

sdrothrock 9y ago

I actually thought the same thing, and wondered if it would somehow be possible to automate this kind of transliteration (?) of existing games to a text format... if you could somehow automate the author's thought/abstraction process to generate a text game from an existing game, this could be a HUGE boost for people who need screen readers.