Okay
As an NVDA user, Mushclient is the only thing that works. Do _not_ pay for vipmud. Yes, that might sound harsh, but hear me out. Vipmud is missing many, many features that have been standard in mud clients since 1999 or so! Let me give you examples:
MCCP: MCCP is the mud client compression protocol. It allows repetative text sent between you and the mud to be compressed, in order to save lag on your end, and bandwidth savings for the mud. It makes so huge a difference that Aardwolf will even punish you by handing out fewer quest points and less XP if you're using a client that doesn't support MCCP. MCCP is supported on nearly every mud server and active mud today. Vipmud does not support it last I checked, and had no plans to add it.
MXP: MXP is the Mud Extension Protocol. It allows muds to mark up text with special formatting marks and styles, similar to HTML. This can help mud clients better recognize and handle everything from paragraph breaks to exit lists. Vipmud does not support it, even though *well* over half the active muds today support and use it.
GMCP: GMCP is a protocol that all of the most popular muds (every iron realms mud, Aardwolf, and more) use to send your mud client specially formatted data about room names and numbers, exits, land types, NPCs, closest shopkeepers/fountains/inns/etc, your characters stats and effects, the skills and spells you know, and much much more. Clients that support GMCP can then use this data in scripts, to build automatic maps and speedwalks, and do all kinds of interesting and helpful things. Guess who doesn't support it, and has no plans to support it? That's right! Vipmud again!
MSP: MSP is the mud sound protocol. It allows a mud to include sounds with the game, and trigger those sounds on your client, with no need for you to make special scripts and triggers. Muds like CoffeeMud, Godwars2, Meteria Magica, and many more all support and use it. Guess who doesn't? I bet you already know the answer: vipmud.
That's just a small list of things not supported by vipmud; I left out other minor features that every modern mud and client has like the mud server status protocol, telnet goahead, pweblo, etc, that vipmud still lacks. Vipmud is yet another example of specialty blind software written to make a buck, that lags nearly fifteen years behind everything sighted people have come to expect in features of mud clients. Payng for vipmud, in my opinion, means supporting the idea that blind people shouldn't get to use mainstream software, and can always expect less from the software we do get. And I'm not just talking nonsense; I own a copy of vipmud, and am extremely unsatisfied; I had hoped that all of these missing features would come in an update, but we've heard nothing about them so far. I had a lot of respect for GMA Games, as they usually release quality products, with lots of features, and add missing features in free updates. This hasn't been the case with vipmud. They've let down both themselves and the blind mudding community. Maybe I missed an announcement or update, I hope I did. Because Vipmud just isn't the kind of product we've come to expect out of GMA.
Okay, now onto accessible muds. Right now, my favourite is CoffeeMud (coffeemud.net, port 23) because of its awsome crafting system, NPC AI, skills/chants/songs/spells, and more...see my post about it in this forum. But with Mushclient, the NVDA reader, and the extra scripts, you should be able to play nearly anything. I've tried alter aeon, aardwolf, 6 dragons, 4 dimensions, core, all of the iron realms muds, hellmoo, miriani, threshhold, discworld, lensemoor, and many more. I've been successful with them all.
Hope this helps! And sorry about the rant, but it's something I've wanted to say since a month after vipmud was released.