Please help with improving accessibility for screen readers.

[Tetrismonster]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Hey guys. I am from the audiogames.net forum. We are a group of blind and visually impaired gamers who strive to improve accessibility in video games. We discovered this game some years ago, however, it isn't accessible enough for us to pick up and play. We use something called a screen reader, which is a piece of software that communicates the contents of the screen via either speech or braille output. The most widely used screen reader is NVDA, which is free. We only use the keyboard to play games, not the mouse. Unfortunately, in order for the game to be made completely accessible, there need to be a few fixes to accessibility. The windows version is only tile based, and the only accessible text-based version is on linux. We don't mind installing a vm to play, but it would be great if the windows version could be made accessible. If making it accessible with a screen reader isn't possible, you could use microsofts speech API. However, please if you decide to do this could you give us options to customize the voice we use? Changing rate, pitch, voice etc. Some have more than one voice on their machine, and this would help make the game as playable as possible. Another thing that we need is an option to completely disable ascii, as that will make the screen reader say things like slash slash slash slash slash slash backslash backslash and so on. If the windows version cannot be made accessible, could you please fix the linux curses version? Right now it is sort of playable, but many members of our community, including me, are too scared to mess with it in its current state. Linux uses a screen reader called orca, and the game cannot be played with anything before ubuntu 18. Apparently the game is completely inaccessible when trying to play with later versions. The menu options don't automatically read when we press the arrow keys. Also, would it be possible to have the speech read the info as it gets displayed? You could try playing a mud using a mud client like vip mud which you can get from gmagames.com for reference. There is a trial version, don't worry. Just make sure you have nvda installed. We would also need text descriptions, as well as the ability to understand what's around us. Also, if you decide to make the windows version accessible, soundpacks can also help by providing bits of info with different audio cues. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for reading.

Solution you would like.

If the windows version isn't able to be made accessible with a screen reader, microsoft sapi could be used. The game would need to have all output read by the screen reader when it appears. The menus need to be made accessible for screen readers, or we could use the numbers row to choose options. Instead of ascii, short text descriptions will suffice.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

No response

Additional context

No response

[storyofablindlife]

Having this game accessible on Windows would be great, I totally agree. Games like Stardew Valley are now accessible, with a keypress we can know what's on the tile we're facing, be it grass or an object, and NVDA reads it. Maybe something similar could be added to CDDA.

[tylerchambliss]

Almost a year and no progress? We'd really like to be able to play this but there hasn't been any accessibility worrk done sense this issue was brought up back in February of last year. Please, someone. Please fix this. There's absolutely no excuse as to why we shouldn't be able to play this game on Windows. And also, on a slightly unrelated note, if you make it possible to assign sounds to events in game through a user interface instead of editing code I'll be able to create a great soundpack for the game where I'll assign as many sounds as possible to as many possible events I have sounds for. The only way you'll get this is if the windows version is accessible with a screen reader. Otherwise it ain't happening.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.

[Zireael07]

Accessibility issues should be excluded from stalebot!

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not bump or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.

[Zireael07]

Bot autoclosed a key accessibility issue!