2018-08-06 10:41:39

@25
That's a useful tip with regards to Steam usage.  I remember being previously informed, erroneously it seems, that you could use space to activate items in OCR, though the mouse commands do work as you stated.  Managed to install a game as a test so hopefully that continues to work until the new web-style interface that's been recently introduced with the friends list update is fully rolled out across the entirety of the Steam ecosystem.

Regards,
Sightless Kombat.
***If you wish to refer to me in @replies, use Sightless***

2018-08-06 12:25:42

The steam client is basically a wrapper for Chrome, but a really old version of chrome, presumably back when chrome was flat out incompatible with screen readers.

However they are in the process of rebuilding the client from the ground up. From the looks of if the website and the client app will use the same interface.

The first bit of it has now been released, which is the chat functionality. It is currently designed with a bunch of mouse only interaction (right click, drag etc), but the text itself is now screen reader accessible.

2018-08-06 14:01:49

If Valve had been willing to collaborate or cooperate on making Steam accessible, you might have had a point, but I understand that Valve has simply been unresponsive towards the idea, as if they didn't care, and I am not going to do anything that might encourage such a negative attitude.

2018-08-06 14:39:17

Yeah, the mouse has always worked for me with OCR. Also seriously I understand your point, I just don't care. Don't use this program, but stop coming on every topic with your self-important attitude as though your opinion carries more weight than everyone else's. Just let us talk about steam like the topic was intended, don't use it, and the world can move on. It's vaguely insulting for you to come on to a topic that's literally asking a question. If this were a steam bashing topic I'd understand, bash to your hearts content. It's not though, so please kindly keep your opinions to yourself. Better yet, create that topic so you can bash and people can argue somewhere where it's actually wanted.

Silly Gohan, animals don't eat people. People eat animals.

2018-08-06 14:40:03

@27
I knew this myself but thanks for elaborating for those who weren't aware.  It was previously in beta but fairly recently got rolled out to everyone as far as I understand it.

Regards,
Sightless Kombat.
***If you wish to refer to me in @replies, use Sightless***

2018-08-06 14:47:55

That's a very good news ian. I did not know about this

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2018-08-06 14:56:20

Hi,
Believe it or not this has actually genuinely surprised me that they have even done this, and I hope that this will mean more in the future. The thing is, mouse commands are OK but there's a lot to be aware of. There's something called DPI, and if that goes wrong, then some screen readers won't work with Steam's mouse functions. It's better to allow keyboard commands for sure when this fully roles out.

2018-08-06 16:37:39

@25
For some reason that doesn't actually seem to work over here, clicking just bounces me out of the window entirely.
Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?
Thanks.

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2018-08-06 17:23:46

How do my messages not apply? This thread is about Steam accessibility and so are my messages.

My messages are my opinions, nothing more, and no more important than your own, if you don't like them you don't have to read them, but to tell me to shut up and go away is quite inappropriate, not to mention rude and offensive.

2018-08-06 17:28:20

@Orko, we're telling you to shut up and go away purely because yoru comments yield nothing to the conversation or increase its value in any way. None of your comments on this topic have been constructive in any manner.
@ian, I actually had read about this earlier, so knew Steam was being rewritten to use a later version of Chrome. I really do enjoy Steam; it would be nice if there was an add-on for NVDA that allowed NVDA to communicate with that version of chrome (there was one for the VIM editor that allowed it to communicate with the VIM editor, which was, previously before that, entirely inaccessible), but I couldn't find it).
@33, odd. I've found that sometimes your mouse doesn't move when NVDA tells it to (people have told me this always works, but it doesn't always work for me).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2018-08-06 18:59:46

33: Yeah I read about something like that, something to do with High DPI scaling with bigger screens stretching the text and zooming it in to illegible levels. With what vision I have I can tell something definitely looks off about the window. Unfortunately all the googling I did lead to red herrings and dead-ends. I'd find an article talking about how to disable high DPI scaling, then a forum post saying it was no longer possible. The only conclusion I've come to is that any settings that might fix the issue are in the steam interface. The only thing I can think of at this point is modifying the settings directly, but the directory is such a mess that sorting through it would take days, assuming it's even possible to modify those particular options.

2018-08-06 20:19:40

@36, I don't think it is. I've looked around in there and couldn't find anything useful -- it was pretty much unreadable garbage to me. And I'm guessin gthat Steam redownloads them when it starts and you've logged in, so...

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-06 21:41:52 (edited by jack 2018-08-06 21:45:40)

Alright, before this spins out of control, let's get everything straight.
Orco is right in his argument that we shouldn't be encouraging the behavior that Valve seemingly took towards accessibility. If that were the case. Fact of the matter that the version of Google Chrome that was in the STeam wrapper was completely and totally inaccessible. So there's absolutely nothing Steam could've done to make that version interact with screenreaders...except recreate the whole engine which is what they are now doing. Could they have done this a long time ago? Abso-friggin-lutely! What took them so long? Can't say I know. But I figured that things were becoming different when they announced incompatibility with windows xp, you don't make an announcement like that with a major change to back you up, take nvda switching to python3 for example. Now this doesn't mean stop the fight altogether, after all we don't know for sure if Steam will be completely accessible. We don't know anything about whether we'll have full keyboard controls, or if the controls will be clearly labeled. What we do know is that before when they had the older Chrome wrapper, there wasn't a hope in hell of it becoming accessible, at least not on their watch, because ancient Google Chrome stood in the way. Now, with the rewrite, they actually have a chance, and they'd better not throw it away.
At least now we have a reason why Steam has been so inaccessible for the longest time. Not an excuse, hell no. But at least we have answers now.

2018-08-06 23:42:13

@jack, in a sense, yes, Orko was right. But he was also wrong: he was basically saying that we should role over and let Valve walk all over us since Steam wasn't accessible. I just can't bring myself to support that point of view and find it quite deconstructive.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-07 02:27:35

It's less that he's wrong, and more that he shoves his opinions where they aren't really wanted. If this is a topic about steam, with a question on how to use it despite its limitations, him saying don't use it at all doesn't add to the topic. It's not constructive. I respect that he feels that way, I don't really disagree with it, but it isn't need in a topic like this when people are just trying to get information on using it despite the fact it isn't completely accessible.

Silly Gohan, animals don't eat people. People eat animals.

2018-08-07 02:47:23

@40, that's what I've tried saying. Thanks for that.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-07 20:01:56

Hi,
Here's what I think on the subject, let's just say I am excited about it.
One of the points I find interesting is Orco's point which might have been in another topic, was that it might have been an accident that they upgraded chrome and the text started to read.
Well, I think he might be right on that fact, after all they might have had to update chrome for security purposes. However, here is the thing that can happen from here:
The fact that text is now recognized by the screen reader, without ocr or hacks, means that half the battle is won, we're not out of the woods yet, but we are a little way there.
It is going to  be, I think, a bit easier to convince Valve about making keyboard controls available. We no longer have to go to Valve and them suddenly wonder, how do we make this whole interface accessible and read, because, indeed, some of this interface is now starting to be recognized. It sometimes takes something like that, an accident, to make someone realize hold on a second, we actually can do something about this.
Now, here's another point. Will it happen by the client's launch day the same as a sighted person? I honestly can not say. Will it happen at all? I can't answer that either. But my gosh we are in for some sort of fighting chance here of finally getting a Steam that is usable by the blind, and not only that, but the same client as everyone else uses. Imagine if it launches but is not totall accessible, yet, a few months later, boom, an update hits that makes it fully accessible. Now that would be epic, and that's why I am also not giving up.

2018-08-07 23:38:46

Exactly. If games themselves can happen to be accidentally playable then so can Steam, at least half of it. That was part of the problem anyway. Now that text is read we can at least manipulate the window normally.

2018-08-08 00:48:55

@34 don't get all pissy because people don't want to hear your crap. It's the same thing from you all the time, about how someone or some entity doesn't meet your expectations, and we're done with it.

To the rest of you who seem to be a lot more reasonable, I agree that this might bode well for us. DO I think Valve has finally considered us, oh hell no, but accidental accessibility or not, I'll take it. I was and continue to use the platform before this happened, and will continue regardless how much it works out good for us.

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2018-08-08 14:40:19

Oh man.  I'd love to see a more accessible Steam, even if it was only slightly more accessible.  I never had issues doing anything I needed to do after I sat down and experimented with the interface for a little while.
At this point though, I'd be happy just having my Steam client fixed, because as it stands, I can't play the games I want to play.

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

2018-08-08 17:46:50

I'm able to use steam as it currently is. Still not satisfactorily though, but I can live with that. One thing I really liked was steams "big screen" view (or whatever its called), where if you've got a controller (I'm mainly familiar with Xbox ones) and you press the Xbox button (guide button on Xbox 1 controllers) while its connected to your computer, Steam will respond and pop up its main menu and you can navigate it with your controller. Too bad NVDA doesn't work with that. smile

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-08-12 10:16:42 (edited by blaze 2018-08-12 11:41:19)

Here's an update. After some playing I discovered why NVDA OCR wasn't clicking on things. Apparently you have to use the arrow keys, and i was using the review cursor, out of habit I guess. So arrow to the text of the control you need, NVDA+divide to route mouse and divide to click. Steam just became a tad more usable again :d. Unfortunately I still can't do the thing I really want which is to change the installation path. I get the installation window up, click on where it says the path, backspace it out and type in the new path, and it appears like it should, but when I click next it... doesn't do it. My games still install to c:\program files (x86)\steam. Some controls that I need also still seem to be missing, namely the settings button and the uninstall button for games. A lot of the stuff that can be done on the website is there however which is irritatingly unhelpful.
Edit: I'm now in the settings window. Turns out the thing that says steam at the top is clickable. Who knew? I got all the way to selecting a folder for games before I got stuck again. I can move around the folder structure of the c drive just fine, but I can't select a different drive. Google says there's supposed to be a dropdown but obviously NVDA doesn't recognize it as a handy dandy html form, that would be too easy. Why can't sighted people learn to use their keyboards again?

2018-08-12 15:52:45

Alec nailed it. People rely on the mouse like it's a friggin crutch! No wonder programming ides are going to shit with drawingboard click-n-drag-based so-called programming languages. Don't get me started on scratch. Even as a supposed educational venture it's a disaster waiting to happen.
Yeah, rant over. Just had to get that out of the way. Back to Steam? I'm glad there's a solution to the clickable elements problem we had earlier, and it actually makes more sense now that you can actually! arrow around.

2018-08-13 04:03:00 (edited by blaze 2018-08-13 04:04:42)

Sure, that's all fantastic, if half the icons I need were recognized by OCR, and many of the ones that are  would actually fricken work. I was actually able to scroll right over the enable/disable dwrite option which is what I think is causing the review cursor to stop working in the first place, but wouldn't ya know, nothing happens when I click on it. Probably some clickable image of a checkbox that puts a slash through it when clicked. I wonder how many more lines of code it took to make that image do that as opposed to slapping the one html line in and calling it done, and for what, to make it look pretty, or something. It really is amazing how that works.

2018-08-13 16:23:45

Hi,
I agree. Getting into a general discussion for a moment, that is, more than steam here, I actually can't believe there are specific commands/scripts for mouse clicking with, seemingly, no keyboard equivalents for various programs and even some websites. It's very sad actually yes, the mouse is common, but there are still, even, sighted people out there who use hotkeys for stuff, and everyone's just not paying attention to that anymore it seems, or if they are, it's hard to find lists of hotkeys for modern programs, no easy to use help screens anymore.