2018-02-16 23:01:46 (edited by gjp1311 2018-02-16 23:03:53)

Hello people! I'm new to this forum, but I've been stalking it for a while now.

Anyway, I'm developing a text-based RPG and to test if the game is accessible to visually impaired and blind people, I've been using the Microsoft Narrator(The game runs in a cmd window).

The problem is that sometimes, I clear the screen to show only the relevant information.
This is giving me some trouble, because I'm not sure if this is the best way to present the game, the narrator basically spams everything every few seconds when you are in a battle, for example.

Should I cast aside this "screen clearings" or it doesn't bother people who are using screen readers?

Thanks!

PS:Sorry for my english, it is not my first language big_smile

2018-02-17 00:48:45

Hi Gjp1311.
I would recommend using NVDA , instead of narrator, that's a much better fully featured screen reader. Or use windows speech API. You can do this by using the tolk library, with the NVDA controller dlls.
And thank you very much for making your game accessible, we can always use more developers like you.
Hth.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2018-02-17 02:11:13

Hello Guitarman!
Thanks for the tip. I downloaded NVDA, struggled a bit to configure, but at last I manage to do it.
The voice pack that comes with the app, is too weird. I changed to the Microsoft pack. The British girl voice is a much better one.

Now I understood why you asked me to download this. I've already picked up 3 screens that, when I entered, it wasn't reading the text for some reason and I'm already fixing this up.

2018-02-17 02:43:25

Yep, clearing the screen shouldn't present a problem.

Narrator is good for just getting a system, and Microsoft are improving it, but I know its not as fully developed as NVDA.

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2018-02-17 04:38:45

Hi.
Yes eSpeak is not a good voice but that's pretty much all NVDA comes with. You can try the sapi4 engine, which has some good voices, also you can try the eloquence add-on, that has both american and british voices. Eloquence is the best of them all in my humble opinion.
Hth.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2018-02-17 12:07:51 (edited by Orko 2018-02-17 12:10:27)

Don't forget Freedom Scientific's JAWS screen reader. While NVDA is popular, JAWS is still the most used screen reader available.

To be truly accessible, it's not enough to support just one screen reader but to support all of the most popular ones. To that end, instead of using a screen reader specific library, I'd recommend using Microsoft's SAPI which is a part of Windows, and is completely independent of which screen reader is used.

And I'll second the thank you for thinking of us and choosing to make your game accessible to us. While there is a variety of audio games available, new developers writing new games is always welcome!

2018-02-17 16:24:34 (edited by cartertemm 2018-02-17 16:26:28)

yes, although if you don't have $1000+ to fork out on a screenreader you'll only be using for testing, don't worry about it. Any half decent screen reader library manager (tolk for example) should have support for the JFW api by default, just make sure your using an auto-detect function. If the player has something running, use that. Otherwise use SAPI.

I personally don't use jaws, but have made various apps and had no complaint about them being inaccessible to those that do

2018-02-17 18:44:55

Hi,
Tolk supports Jaws too. Unfortunately, Freedom Scientific have, buried in their terms of service, that you can't just download the evaluation version to test out a developed program, apparently. Now, if they've recently gone back on this change, please let me know because I'd be very interested, but if not, I don't see people paying $1000 just to test out to see if their program is accessible or not.

2018-02-17 19:21:43

Right, tolk will work with Jaws so there is no need to worry about that. Implementing sapi support can be done through tolk I believe, but it really should only be fallback, if another screen reader isn't running. The problem with sapi is that it doesn't interrupt well, its laggy, and the default windows voices just aren't that good, especially if you're still on win 7, in which case Anna is probably the worst voice Microsoft have ever made.

I would also have to contest that Jaws is the most popular or most used solution, maybe in the corporate world, but since NVDA is free and open source, it is being used heavily in developing countries. I'd have to do a little more research to find out, but its certainly being used in a great many countries. I know its the most used screen reader in Brazil.

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2018-02-17 20:49:53

Hi.
Woops forgot jaws, because I don't use it myself. But yes tolk has support for NVDA, jaws, sapi, and window-eyes I believe.
Hth.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2018-02-17 21:39:05

Tolk also has wrappers for many languages, I've said this before, but if a dummy like me can get it working, anyone can.

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2018-02-19 12:20:07

Hello!

Thanks for the feedback! I've already put the tolk library to work on my project, and at least for now, it is working with NVDA.
I have these dlls in my bin folder :
dolapi32.dll
nvdaControllerClient32.dll
SAAPI32.dll

Are these enough to support or does I need another one?

Thanks!

2018-02-19 19:30:43

That should be all you need.
Tolk interacts with JAWS through a COM object, and doesn't need an extra dll for it.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2018-02-20 10:58:02 (edited by gjp1311 2018-02-20 11:00:00)

Ian Reed wrote:

That should be all you need.
Tolk interacts with JAWS through a COM object, and doesn't need an extra dll for it.

I'm not sure if it will work through a COM object because I'm using managed code : (.NET).
I think that to be able to test with Jaws, I'll have to launch the game for testing, because as cartertemm said, I would have to spend 1000+ just to buy the application for testing. (I have no idea why they chose this backwards business model).

2018-02-20 16:39:10

I use Tolk through C# and the .NET Framework for my own game projects.
They are able to output to the JAWS screen reader through Tolk.
C# can interact with COM objects directly, but in the case of Tolk, Tolk provides a small C# PInvoke wrapper that calls into the native C code that Tolk is written in.
That native code interacts with the COM object.
It should work fine.
Still, testing is always a good idea. smile

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2018-02-20 16:42:49

You can get a demo version that works for 40 minutes per computer boot up. It should be good enough for what you need it for, if a bit unfortunately crippled as you probably can't get much testing done in 40 minutes. I'd recommend either installing it on a computer you don't much care about, or installing it inside a VM. The reason being is it puts a bunch of junk along with it, stuff you'll never need and stuff it doesn't always clean up after if you uninstall it. IT also jacks with your video drivers and makes the desktop look pretty bad. I can't say the effect this will have on windows 10, but when I tried it on windows 7, it turned off Aero and made everything look all monochromatic along the taskbar and it turned the alt tab pop up all white and nasty looking. I am partially sighted, and I know sighted people wouldn't be able to tolerate that type of stuff well.

The nice thing about a VM is that you can just restart the VM when your time runs out without having to restart your entire system. You also won't have to worry about uninstalling JAWS when you're done as you can just wipe the VM, or another solution would be to either move the VM over to an SD card if your system has a card reader in it, or a flash drive. n that case, you can have it for whenever you need to do Jaws accessibility testing.

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