2020-06-15 01:52:40 (edited by nerdygentleman 2020-06-15 03:02:43)

Heya -

I've made a game, that still needs balancing - but I've tried making it accessible with a screen reader. It's on https://nerdygentleman.itch.io/swipe-poker (password 'Poker!' (Poker, with a capital P, followed by an exclamation mark)- only because it's not ready for general consumption).

I'm a sighted player, so I'm kinda shooting from the hip. Could somebody let me know if the interface works for them, at all? Like, not an assessment of the gameplay (because even I'm still figuring if that's fun) - but is it at least parsable and playable?

Rules are possibly not quite clear enough yet - so just quickly:
- There's a grid of cards
- You can select any valid poker hand, vertically, horizontally or diagonally
- Higher hands are worth more points
- Hands that are better than a 3 of a kind will add some new cards

That last rule is likely to change some more, with playtesting. I've got a few ideas to try out.

I'll also note that it doesn't yet figure out when you've lost and finished - you'll need to refresh to start again.

But, I'd prefer to know whether the UI works at all for unsighted players now, rather than tacking it on at the end.

Thank you for any help.

2020-06-15 02:53:57 (edited by Quin 2020-06-15 02:54:37)

Hi, I would love to try this out and give feedback. However when I enter the password it says it is invalid. It is "Poker" without the quotes, right?
Edit: Oops, my bad. I forgot the "!". Trying it out now.

2020-06-15 02:58:33

There's a thing in it like a ! thing, review with punctuation thing like #!/bin/gcc

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2020-06-15 03:02:02

Sorry - didn't realise that screenreaders wouldn't get the exclamation mark

2020-06-15 14:31:12

First, thanks so much for working to make your game accessible! Gave this a brief attempt:

1. The password appears to no longer be needed. I assume you removed it?

2. I had a hard time using the "Click or tap to start" control. In particular, emulated mouse clicks didn't make it work for me. Could you either use a <button/>, or slap a role="button" attribute on the start button, add tabindex="0", and some keyboard handling to respond to Space/Enter?

3. I did eventually get something to happen, and there was an area that seemed to indicate where selected cards were on the grid. I'm not sure how I selected any cards, though. What are the keyboard commands, if any? Having built a few accessible HTML games, I'd expect an element that receives keyboard commands, and it probably needs tabindex="0".

2020-06-15 15:14:03

I think its meant to be used on mobile, it didn't respond to keyboard commands when I tried last night and I was too lazy to load it up on
my phone.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2020-06-15 22:35:04

Oh - it was using mouse. Sorry - I'm still new at this. I'll get the keyboard working too.

2020-06-27 04:07:15

I've got keyboard input working, but I'm having issues with the screen reader (being Windows Narrator) intercepting my keypresses. Could anybody with another screen reader let me know if the version that's up now works for them?

If not, has anybody dealt with this before? Anybody have any idea of how to get my canvas to get the keypress before the screenreader does? I've so far tried adding 'role="application"' to my body tags of the index, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

2020-06-27 06:03:29

Typically you can turn on something called browsing mode if you want your keys to be sent directly to the window. Iā€™m not sure what is the command to do so in narrator, or even if it is possible, but in NVDA  you can press the NVDA modifier and space, both for turning it on and off.
I wish I had seen this a little earlier, would have been able to give my feedback today. Will do so tomorrow if nobody else gets to this first.

2020-06-27 10:08:56

Hi there, awesome to see new faces making their games accessible! smile

In Narrator the key you want is also Caps+Space, you want to be in the mode where it says "Scan off". For the best results as far as screen reader testing on Windows goes you'll probably want to grab NVDA though, as the number of people using Narrator as their main screen reader is extremely low and NVDA is pretty much the golden standard with Web support so if it works there it should work with everything else as well. You also have the right idea with the application roll, I'm not sure if Narrator is programmed to react to it but NVDA definitely does. So if you set it up to set focus to the element that has the roll when the page loads NVDA, as well as most other screen readers, should detect that you're inside an application and let keystrokes through.

I tried your game out with NVDA here, and I was able to see the application area and focus it. But after that no key I pressed gave me any kind of feedback so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to start the game. What are the keys to play?

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2020-06-27 16:40:08 (edited by nerdygentleman 2020-06-27 16:40:37)

Excellent! I'll have look in my morning and check with Narrator.

A key press should get through the title screen. H on the game mode will give help which gives the rest of the keys (Arrows or WASD to move cursor, R to Resign, Space to select the card).

It should have reacted to a keypress though, and should have given an instruction (via an aria tag) to push 'h' for help.

2020-06-27 16:41:10

Hey, works well! Haven't had time to play an actual game, but here's my feedback:

  • Under Linux/Orca, I can tab to the application area and am automatically switched to Orca's focus mode (NVDA Forms mode equivalent.) At that point, my keyboard events correctly route to the element. This may just be a Narrator shortcoming, but NVDA should work for you.

  • I might suggest "?" instead of "h" to read the keyboard shortcuts. I did obviously find "h" but tried "?" first.

  • Likewise, I'd suggest Enter in addition to Space to select a card.

  • You might want to try having the game element grab focus when it loads. Then again, maybe not. My Itch game seems to require click-to-play, and I don't play enough Itch HTML games to know what the norm is. But yours seems to launch ready to play, so maybe a focus grab on page load would be confusing.

Again, thanks for working to make your game accessible! Much appreciated!

2020-06-27 16:42:38

@11 Oh, and I didn't hear the "H for help" message. It could very well have said it and I didn't hear it over the start music. Not necessarily recommending getting rid of the start music, but I'd still consider "?" instead of or in addition to "h".

2020-06-27 17:19:37

@1 this is a very good way to take on accessibility. Build it in while the code is still being made, not later when you have to go back and rework it to work right with screen readers. I'm not sure  what you've done, but here is what i would do.
headings:
have headings ot seperate  the areas, so like a navigation section, the rules, and the card grid.
button tables
for that grid of cards, you could arange is in a grid put inside of a table, with each card being a labled button that cna be pressed to select it, and a choose hand button could be below said table.

2020-06-27 17:32:26

@14, do us all a favor:
Play the game first.
No, seriously. If you want to give feedback, shocker, you have to play the product about which you are going to share your opinions.

2020-06-29 14:22:30 (edited by nerdygentleman 2020-06-29 14:23:31)

Coolcoolcoolcoolcool. I've added / and ? as help buttons, and 'enter' as a select button.

Next gameplay changes are probably going to inadvertently make it a little easier to parse; I think the board is about to get a little bit smaller.

Desktop version will get updates tomorrow.

2020-06-30 18:45:27

I would recommend triggering the speech after the help music. So when the intro music finishes, play the speech. Otherwise, it's really hard to hear the screen reader.
I would like a hint of what to do during the first round, for example, I didn't understand that I could only go in one direction until about 3 rounds after trying the game. I also didn't hear the h for help, and when I had all my cards, I didn't know what to do, so I just started pressing buttons.

2020-07-01 07:21:23

I reduced size of board. I think it's a little easier to comprehend now, even for sighted players.

@17, I've changed the rules about one direction while reducing. Genuinely - thank you for your patience, and giving it a chance. Would it be more helpful to read the entirety of the rules when you start? Or will that be annoying after multiple times? Sorry - I'm still not sure of what's 'polite' to do (or acceptable) with a screenreader. I'll try to get it to wait until after music too.