Re:Command Line Programs for the Blind
by giraffe_lady on Thursday April 14, 2022 @10:06AM
(#31027211)
I don't know of any roguelikes that implement this but there are MUDs with some degree of baked-in accessibility. The one I used to play was in the LPmud family and had a significant contingent of vision-impaired players.
Those also depend pretty heavily on ascii maps and the solution they implemented was having a "written map" output option. So instead of like |--@-c your "map" would read "the end of your vision is three rooms west, a child is two rooms east" etc.
It gets very verbose when you have a lot of data in both dimensions but is fully legible to screen readers. In the mud-specific case too it can be sent out of bounds through GMCP or similar and handled in client-specific and user-configurable ways. I don't know what a similar UI would be like in a roguelike, but MUDs also move a lot faster than RLs so it may not be a problem that needs to be solved.
Those also depend pretty heavily on ascii maps and the solution they implemented was having a "written map" output option. So instead of like |--@-c your "map" would read "the end of your vision is three rooms west, a child is two rooms east" etc.
It gets very verbose when you have a lot of data in both dimensions but is fully legible to screen readers. In the mud-specific case too it can be sent out of bounds through GMCP or similar and handled in client-specific and user-configurable ways. I don't know what a similar UI would be like in a roguelike, but MUDs also move a lot faster than RLs so it may not be a problem that needs to be solved.