Would the use of more fancy multimedia functions ruin IF for the blind?
James Jolley
All this talk about Bold face text and things like that got me thinking.
Is modern IF eventually going to leave the blind behind because of the
need to differentiate between fonts and things? I certainly hope not as
I enjoy IF works more than any other and feel that this would be a bad
thing.
For instance, in Emily Short's Floatpoint, does the picture ad anything
to the work? What is it anyway?
Best
-James-
----== Posted via Newsgroups.com - Usenet Access to over 100,000 Newsgroups ==----
Get Anonymous, Uncensored, Access to West and East Coast Server Farms at!
----== Highest Retention and Completion Rates! HTTP://WWW.NEWSGROUPS.COM ==----
Greg Boettcher
> All this talk about Bold face text and things like that got me thinking.
> Is modern IF eventually going to leave the blind behind because of the
> need to differentiate between fonts and things? I certainly hope not as
> I enjoy IF works more than any other and feel that this would be a bad
> thing.
The main effect of italics, for example, is to add nuance and
emphasis. If you miss the italics, you miss something subtle. And
while that can be somewhat important, it's not usually so important
that it will seriously hamper gameplay.
The only game I've seen where losing italics or bold might damage your
experience of the game is Whom the Telling Changed, where words are
set in bold if you can type them at the prompt for more information.
Greg
pfshec...@gmail.com
are becoming increasingly photo-realistic -- yet IF has been around
for decades. I think that alone is a sign that interactive fiction
will remain a text-based medium for a long time.
Bert Byfield
As it is with books.
James Jolley
BertB...@nospam.not says...
from the accessibility point. For instance, using boldened fonts to
offer up suggestions or using bitmap type things to perhaps display more
colours. I don't know enough about graphics, all I do know is that in
some applications, screen readers work great and yet in some, there
effectively as blind as I am. I've been told that some things don't work
because there using bitmap graphics so I asumed that with the new Glulxe
support in Inform 7, people might try this themselves.
>
All the best and sorry if i'm completely confused.
reg
> to the work? What is it anyway?
There is a picture at the very beginning of Floatpoint. It is a
drawing of a woman, turned to the side with her palms facing up
upward. Above her palms floats some sort of plant I think. Hard to
say what it is. The woman is wearing a cloak with a hood and has
designs on her face making her look a bit alien. The background has
mountains in the background and a snowy sky. Above the woman it says
"Floatpoint".
I think the picture is just meant to set a fantasy sort of mood. I
guess it's like a book cover. I played the game quite a long time ago
but from what I recall this doesn't have a lot to do with the game,
nor did it help me out with any puzzles...
I'm sort of a text purist myself. I even hesitate seeing movies of
books I've read because I don't like to loose the images I've created
in my head of what I think the characters and scenery look like!
Sincerely,
Reg
James Jolley
musiclangu...@yahoo.ca says...
description, you'd make a fortune.
Thanks again.
Knight Errant
wrote:
There's also "Spider and Web", where the presence or absence of
italics is your only clue to the fact that two puzzles even exist.
Without them, I have no idea how one would figure out that there's
something important about that air vent.
Knight Errant
Andrew Plotkin
> On Jul 6, 5:33 pm, Greg Boettcher <WRITETOgre...@gregboettcher.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The only game I've seen where losing italics or bold might damage your
> > experience of the game is Whom the Telling Changed, where words are
> > set in bold if you can type them at the prompt for more information.
>
> italics is your only clue to the fact that two puzzles even exist.
> Without them, I have no idea how one would figure out that there's
> something important about that air vent.
I did not, in that dark and fixed-width age, assume that everybody
had an italic font available in their interpreter. (As it turned out,
some people who did still didn't notice the italics.)
General IF poking around seemed to serve as an adequate substitute, at
least for some players.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
It used to be that "conservatives" were in favor of smaller government,
fiscal responsibility, and tighter constraints on the Man's ability to
monitor you, arrest you, and control your life.
Mike Rozak
I would dispute that, and I know many people here would dispute my
dispute... But that's a different overly-beaten horse.
Basically, an IF development system that allows for pictures needs to have a
way to provide a verbal description of the image, as well as hot spots...
and the verbal description needs to be encouraged. The verbal description
can then be fed to the screen reader. I haven't implimented this in my own
system yet, but it's on the schedule.
Likewise, an IF system that has audio needs to work for deaf players too.
And there's also the issue of IF played by people with severe carpel tunnel
syndrome who can't type.
The Taleslinger
> <pfsheckar...@gmail.com> wrote in message
James, apart from the things mentioned, can you play any kind of IF? I
mean, I'm not exactly sure how you play anything at all, but are you
platform bound or something?
Italics? In Spider and Web? Haven't noticed them, and the game had
(has) me confused all the time.
James Jolley
gh...@gmx.de says...
Hi,
I tend to use Filfre exclusively for ZCode as I had difficulties with
Winfrotz. There was a stupid version done that used TTS but as i have my
screen reader at 350 plus words a minute it took too long, plus it
echoed a lot of unnecessary text.
I've never had any experiences with TADS 3 games, but I did play a few
TADS 2 ones using a dos box at university.
All the best