2017-09-04 01:06:18

Hi all,
I am putting this to the community as a trial/experimental run, and would like feedback. I have done this with a more popular game series that people are already playing, and is also available through other platforms, and would like your feedback.
I have modified the Choice of Games entry in the following ways:
*added Steam for Windows to the platform field.
*Added a heading at the end, trying to explain about Steam. I am trying to do this in such a way that doesn't make users stay away, but that also lets users know that there will be some additional setup required. It is my hope that eventually we can have a Steam guide that we can link to. Even if it means that games like Grail to The Thief and Skullgirls just get Steam entries, with nothing else for a few years, at least we can prepare ourselves in case more accessible (and I do mean *fully* accessible) games come along through Steam. As it stands, the Choice of Games are fully accessible once launched through the client, and if people can't get Steam to work then they can still play these with the iOS, Android and web releases, so I think there is absolutely nothing to lose by adding this. Any thoughts? If this is not received well, I will remove it, but I am putting this to the community. As of now, the experiment has officially begun. Please look at the stuff especially the extra heading at the end, and let me know what you think. Also please note, this does not, I repeat not, mean that I'm about to add games like Mortal Kombat because their menus are not voiced and the game is not fully accessible. If those games got talking menus? Then yes. But not now. I am thinking games like Skullgirls, Choice of Games, Grail to The Thief, and Smugglers. I want as many users to give feedback as possible. Thank you in advance.

2017-09-04 14:32:20

I see no problem with the steam in and of itself as a platform and a steam guide is a good idea, however it should be made clear that A, steam is not an accessible platform and the workarounds required to get it to run are not equal in effort to what a sighted person would require, and B, that Valve are not interested in changing this fact.

We can support developers of accessible, but we shouldn't support a platform  with so little  care given to game access.
So for  instance I would suggest instead of "steam itself takes some setting up to be usable"  (which sounds rather similar to a game with a complex registration process).

"Because Valve have shown no desire to include screen reader support or audio in the steam interface the setup is rather complex requiring ocr and specific Nvda tools to be used see the guide for details, though once the initial steam setup is gone through the games are as accessible as on any other platform"

This lets visitors know that steam is usable but not accessible, and that we don't approve of Valve's behaviour, but that things can be got through with the right tools and effort.

Such a description might even help in the war to get steam accessible, though after all the shenanigans that have already gone into that particular discussion I am not sure.

it also lets people know about their options where there is a choice of platforms.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-04 23:26:12

Yep, you hit the nail on the head there. I'm wondering though if we can perhaps collate a sort of tallied list of every single fully accessible game on Steam, we'd get to the double didgets and then try sending it to some people at Valve. One thing I can tell you with certainty is they do, finally, know we are out there, although I don't know if this includes the CEO but it includes a few people, I do not currently have any names. It's just such a shame that it appears to be much more complicated to get this program accessible, so it's still this NVDA hackjob or possibly even the mobile apps. Heck, even if they just implemented tolk and arrow key presses for the game library, with enter to install, that'd do it for most of us, plus open up the door for a whole ton of stuff that can be added down the line. Achievements? Yep. But I don't know if they know about Tolk or not. Plus the fact that I don't know how many people at Valve learned about what we face when using Steam.

2017-09-05 00:02:45

With the sort of money and resources Valve have at their disposal I'm afraid "complicated" is not something I accept these days, not when as you said toke and other self voicing options are out there, and  given the far greater work that Apple have done in their os, even Microsoft these days, not to mention so many indi devs who have added accessibility options to their games with infinitely less by way of resources and time at their disposal than the fat cats at valve.

So on our part this is a time for honesty, giving details of what is required to run steam and making no bones about the fact that no, it is not an acceptable state of affairs, but also making it clear to our  that the problem is not the games, but the stupid platform they're run on.

The danger in  adding steam at all is that some arse hole at Valve will say "oh well it must be accessible because blind people are using it so we don't have any responsibility" (believe me this was a similar response I once got from Capcom uk).

So the situation needs to be made plane both to our visitors and to the public at large that yes, steam can be used, but no, the standard of access is not acceptable.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-05 19:41:41

I am probabbly the only one with that opinion here, but as Long as Steam isn't accessible, it shouldn't be placed on a DB entry.

Greetings and happy gaming, Julian

If you say you never lie, you're a liar.
Oh, and #freeGCW

2017-09-05 22:42:15

The argument is basically that firstly it is not the fault  of games like graille to the thief, smugglers and skull girls where the developers have done a lot of accessibility work that the platform is so crappy, and secondly that once the account system is setup and the games actually downloaded you apparently don't then need to interact with steam to launch and play the game.
Indeed, if you always had to interact with Steam through complex tools and use of ocr everytime you wanted to play I would strongly object to it's being added to the db myself, since then the playing of the game each and every time would be an unequal amount of effort and thus inaccessible.

As it is I tend to think of itmore like sticking labels on your cds and on the buttons of your cd player (, a pain in the arse the first time, but okay once the setup is done, albeit you'll need another pestilential setup for each and every new cd.

of course for this analogy to work we have to forget that you can just bang a cd in your computer rip it and then be in complete control with your screen reader, favourite music playing program etc big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-06 14:11:02

@Dark: you are basically right. For playing a game, all you have to do is make sure you are logged in with Steam, which is just one command, and then launch the Steam shortcut to the game which can mostly be found in the start menu or, if it works, on the desktop. I made a whole folder with just Steam shortcuts in there. Installing a new game can be done in a few different ways but I'm waiting for people to give me more info, because sometimes through the pc client it can be a little iffy if you try to select the game from a large library of games. However if you are on the website, and you buy the game, it pops up with a little bit on the page asking if you have Steam. If you then open up Steam and switch back to the web page, you can click yes, and an install window will magically pop up. I think you can install games using the mobile app as well, but I'd like confirmation on this. The thing I find really annoying about Steam for new users though is there's no audio captcha, I think that's frankly unacceptable in this da and age.

2017-09-06 15:29:58

Well at least for the captcha there are tools available, eg, captcha begone, though it is the ocr required in th pc client that worries me, that was the major problem I noticed when I tried steam myself, that it was nearly impossible to interact with the steam client itself and it was basically an utterly inaccessible program, hence why I  like this made clear in the db.

Though it is good if you  can buy and install the games  from a conventional website without having to interact too much with Valve's stupid program.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-06 18:58:51

@Dark: there are a few commands that might help you, most notably make sure numlock is off and you can use numpad seven and 9. However before all that, for your Steam shortcut if you go to properties, at the end of all the quotation marks if you do space and then type in dash no dash dwrite (look at the spelling for this one) it should activate a feature that makes it more text. I've also added the login command, which is dash login space username space password, so that I don't have to mucka bout with that dialogue all the time. From there you can use nvda plus numpad divide to route, and just numpad divide to click. However, if NVDA's DPI issues kick in this is where things get annoying becuase there's literally nothing we can do really, accept use the web interface and hope it lets you install stuff once logged in. YOu have to click on the install screen to get it to work, I think. Maybe enter works, it's something I haven't tried for a while so I don't ahve much confirmation.

2017-09-08 05:47:14

-no-dwrite turns off video text pretty much completely so that the interface is not accessible, but textual. I also use an nvda addon, objpad which makes object navigation a hell of a lot easier. Ctrl+insert+tab will switch between modes, scan mode works the best. In this way, you can use the arrow keys to navigation around the flat review of the steam interface. Hell, I've even been able to use the up and down arrow keys to move through a game's right click menu through options like install, view manual, etc. While that certainly doesn't mean the thing is accessible, and obviously the arrowing through menus is an illusion of an accessible interface, but it is a lot more nice to have a somewhat more conventional navigation method for folks who really aren't comfortable with traditional object navigation. The situation for steam for mac may or may not have changed slightly, with the release of VOCR, an OCR plugin for voiceover. VOCR, however, is a script driven by Keyboard Maestro, and Keyboard Maestro itself is a wopping $36.

2017-09-08 15:44:26

It is a good while since I tried steam, though as I have plenty  other things going at the moment it's not a major priority, hell I'm still in the middle of moving house.

My point though is just that Steam's lack of accessibility does need to be made clear on the db both for visitors and people campaigning to get the idiots at Valve to see sense.

Whether there is any likelihood of this I'm not convinced, but hay it has to be tried anyway, though it is a shame that you can't just bypass the idiotic program once an account is created and just download and run games the way you would from any site once login is completed.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-09-09 01:38:46

Oh absolutely. The unfortunate thing is that Steam's our only option, well itch.io is like the new Desura, but not as well known and the unfortunate going under of Desura was a major blow for independent game developers.

2017-09-16 17:36:22

Hi all,
I agree that there should be an user guide to steem, I didn't have any problems with steem, but I know what's it like to have some lazy idiots coding the project. How ever, NVDA is opened sourced, in jaws there are scripts, so basicly if someone can do something like make an jaws script for steem for jaws users, or a NVDA add_on that will work with steem. but, as long as there are no such things, and the company doesn't do something in the program it self, our hands are tied, it will be just vaste of time doing such a thing. How ever I still support this, and let's hope that this will help in the leest.
Kind regards.
Aleksandar

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2017-09-22 05:28:43

Thing with nvda addons is that in addition to having an nvda user proficient in nvda addon development, we would need a sighted person willing to spend the needed time probing the interface to help make the addon. Now if you know someone interested enough, go for it.