[TADS2] Playability by the blind

[Kevin Venzke]

Hello,

Does anyone have a sense of what I might want to keep in mind
to make games playable by the blind?

I know that my first game was playable, but I didn't use HTML mode
for it. Now I am using HTML mode (mainly to use italics and boldface),
and I'm wanting to have clickable underlined text which enters text at
the prompt (such as for a footnote). Anyone know if that will create
problems for the player?

Thanks.

Kevin Venzke

[aerosp...@hotmail.com]

Kevin Venzke wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Does anyone have a sense of what I might want to keep in mind
> to make games playable by the blind?
>
> I know that my first game was playable, but I didn't use HTML mode
> for it. Now I am using HTML mode (mainly to use italics and
boldface),

As long as they player can access the screan of the interpreter this
shouldn't be a problem reading. Unfortunaetly if the bold/italics are
to provide a visual clue of the important words/actions the emphasis
will most likely not carry over.

> and I'm wanting to have clickable underlined text which enters text
at
> the prompt (such as for a footnote). Anyone know if that will create
> problems for the player?

I'm not sure about this one. I don't think I've seen a game that did
it so I have no prior experience to draw on. Typically I use the
command-line verssion of the interpretors which work the easiest with
my text-to-speac engine, or use the "plain text" mode if there is one.

My most baisc suggestion is to test the game in the command line
interpretor, and if everything works well and no basic playability is
lossed (i.e. the player can still complete the game with the same
effort as the suped up html verssion) than it should be fine for
blind/VI players. If however the html is a necessity to copleting the
game (you must look at the map which is a jpg image to find your way
out of the maze, but there's no comperable text description to aid
those who can not see the map) than you might want to re-think why
you're using html.

I hope this was of some help to you.
Happy coding. I look forward to your future release, and I shall now
skip over to the archive to look up your previous work(s).

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,

Thanks for replying.

<aerosp...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1114829757....@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

>> I know that my first game was playable, but I didn't use HTML mode
>> for it. Now I am using HTML mode (mainly to use italics and
> boldface),
> As long as they player can access the screan of the interpreter this
> shouldn't be a problem reading. Unfortunaetly if the bold/italics are
> to provide a visual clue of the important words/actions the emphasis
> will most likely not carry over.

Ok. That alarms me a bit but I'll keep it in mind.

>> and I'm wanting to have clickable underlined text which enters text
>> at the prompt (such as for a footnote).

> I'm not sure about this one. I don't think I've seen a game that did

> it so I have no prior experience to draw on. Typically I use the
> command-line verssion of the interpretors which work the easiest with
> my text-to-speac engine, or use the "plain text" mode if there is one.
>
> My most baisc suggestion is to test the game in the command line
> interpretor, and if everything works well and no basic playability is
> lossed (i.e. the player can still complete the game with the same
> effort as the suped up html verssion) than it should be fine for
> blind/VI players.

Hmm. It seems to me my first game wouldn't run in the DOS window
interpreter due to the size.

> I hope this was of some help to you.
> Happy coding. I look forward to your future release, and I shall now
> skip over to the archive to look up your previous work(s).

Prepare to be frustrated by it, I think. Unwinnable situations are kind
of rampant.

I should say, I don't know if it's a big deal when a game can be played
with no problems. I only know my game was playable because I got
emails from someone. Maybe decent spelling makes a difference?

Thanks again.

Kevin Venzke

[Mike Roberts]

"Kevin Venzke" <step...@yahooo.frr> wrote:
> It seems to me my first game wouldn't run in the DOS window interpreter
> due to the size.

Note that if you use the 32-bit DOS-box interpreter, tr32.exe, memory is
effectively unlimited - you should be able to run any game with tr32 that
will run with HTML TADS. You can find the executable in the tads32_xxx.zip
package at the IF archive.

--Mike
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com

[Fredrik Ramsberg]

Don't put in puzzles which rely on the player knowing what color
different things are in real life. Sounds obvious perhaps, but this
must be taken into consideration if you really want your game to be
just as playable for blind people as for seeing.

And yes, I learnt this the hard way.