I do receive warning about the drill though. but yeah will be nice  if it is more frequent.

I have updated the dust and slime to not fire the spam messages in screenreader mode, and removed all the old objects. The spam should be reduced now.

One thing I'd rather like, is the ability to have the hole help file printed, and not need to hit enter at more prompts.
I assume that (like many muds), you can set maximum page length in coremud, but I've not seen commands for that as yet.

chance to look at the board for corequad square by square would be handy, and likewise get an idea of which coordinates got captured, but that will probably be it's own thing.
apartment fixes would be nice though.

For the sneezing etc, that is not spam, that is probably because you aren't wearing an air filter.

I personally don't mind the lack of warning messages on the drill, since having your drill run out of juice isn't so bad, and you can always have a powercell handy to recharge, it's a bit more of a pain when you realise your stuck in the sewers and out of lizon .

What would be nice in terms of charge, is a way to view the status a bit more quickly without having to read the full item description or need to go line by line, ditto with items that use power, EG check drill, check gun etc.

I'm not sure if this is an access matter, but it would also be nice if the merchants command had slightly better filters for shop types or items, since at the moment if say I'm looking to buy some lizon for my weaponry and I type "merchants lizon, I get a list of all merchants online, rather than just those I am looking for, and have ended up going to the wrong cluster, then again the merchants system is something I'm still getting my head around anyway, but as that goes into more mechanics discussion than accessibility I'll not question that one here.

I suspect a lot more in the game would work in terms of sounds, but unfortunately even though the sounds are supposed to use msp, I can't get vipmud to play them, which is odd, as  other muds I've tried with msp soundpacks worked fine.

I don't know what the issue is there unfortunately, though as someone mentioned having a similar issue with another client it might be something the same.

Well given that Steve doesn't feel blind people should know where they live... Just kidding, though it would be cool if that did get fixed, because in the screen reader friendly version of score, the apartment info ain't showing.

Other than that, I'll have to wait until I do more to offer up more suggestions. I really appreciate what's been done thus far though. I've been there for only two days an already, so much has been done to accommodate us, so much thanks from me.

Regarding MSP, it's highly unreliable in my experience. I don't use it. I am making my own sounds to work in this game because getting MSP to work is an endeavor that I dont' really feel like undertaking. Plus, I like making over the top binaural sounds.

The updated "stocks" command for screenreader-friendly output is now in the game.

I fixed that, sorry about that.

"score apt" - will show your apartment, or just plain score now

Steve, I'm not opposed to adding a new channel, sr, that is exclusively for screenreader / accessibility topics.  That would be easy enough to make.

Done, screenreader mode will suppress the wiki link

Awesome, this is all good information for me to keep in mind, thank you for the information. Emoji: Smiley-Face

By the way, I did notice the messages regarding itchy skin and breathing in dust and whatnot. I would not consider those either spam or an accessibility barrier. If the filters you can buy suppress these messages, or reduce their frequency, I would recommend restoring the messages to screen reader users.

Personally, I feel that there should be a good reason to alter the gameplay experience in the name of accessibility. Note that a lot of what's already been done hasn't necessarily altered the experience, instead, it has enhanced what's already there, bringing us on a level with our sighted peers. You will sometimes get feedback from people that is not objective, but preferential in nature.

I try not to do that when communicating with developers. I will give the information they want with an objective point of view, without my personal feelings and biases attached; at least, as much as I can. In my opinion, the frequency of the messages do not constitute an accessibility barrier. We can tap the control key to silence any speech or anything queued up to speak. We also have the option of gagging those messages, which is quite trivial in almost any client. Also, if the filters do indeed cut down on the number of messages, then that option is available as well.

Besides which, you're removing a feature of the game from a subset of players for no other reason that I can see, other than someone didn't like them. While this could be construed as a criticism of your working process, I believe it's important to first of all say, I think an incredible job has been done so far in making the game more playable for us. Secondly, as a proponent for an equal experience among both the sighted and blind, I think it's important to highlight the difference between an accessibility barrier and a situation like this.

Accessibility barriers represent situations where someone with a disability cannot proceed past said barrier, or must use workarounds which vary in complexity to move forward, where non-disabled people would not be presented with an issue. In this case, since it's unreasonable for sighted developers to know every facet, or even any bit of how our screen reading software works, it's understandable how this could have been perceived as an accessibility barrier, when in actuality, it really isn't.

I hope I did a fairly decent job at explaining this, especially since this type of thing isn't necessarily one of my strong suits. There are definitely those to be found here on this forum who have done much more extensive work liaising with sighted developers and doing accessibility testing than I have. I also don't think the person who made that suggestion meant any harm by it. If you have any more questions about how screen readers work, or what does and doesn't constitute an accessibility barrier, do feel free to post them here. I feel like we're very close to being able to play on the same level as our sighted counterparts, and it's my hope that we can get there without cutting things out of the game as much as possible.

We have created a central clearing house on Core's Discord for this topic, so the coding staff can track (and disclose to the public) what has been done with respect to accessibility.  We will continue to use this thread here on audiogames.net as our primary source for suggestions and feedback.

If you wish to read what we're documenting on our end, here is the link:
https://discord.gg/hAKMuFGYtz

Thank you again to all for your input and patience with us.  These past few days have been a whirlwind for us, for sure!  We have been chipping away at this over the past decade or so, but had no idea there was an online community dedicated to this topic.

Grey

Okay, had a rather weird problem. I wanted to shower after mining and couldn't find my apartment .
I found the right level and quadrant of the housing dome, but the map command was not useful at all, and in this case the descriptions were mostly the same, and though I'd memorised the way from! my apartment to the entrance of the housing quadrant and thought I could just reverse the directions, that clearly did not work.

one major problem, is that though I knew my apartment number, the room description showed names on the doors, not numbers, so I had no idea where I was generally in the quadrant.

Firstly, it might be helpful if the doors actually showed numbers as well as names, just like doors in a hotel, that way you could roughly  know how close to your own apartment you were.
You might also consider having the map command work like the scan command and tell you what direction given numbers of apartment doors were, EG "north 28, 29, east 25 26" etc.

You might also consider having the map command tell you the relative directions of the quadrant entrance, and your apartment, the way the shaft brief command tells you the relative directions of motherloads in mines. This, combined with actually knowing what number apartment your close to, should make finding it possible, since after all, this is not navigating around a damp sewer full of nasties, it's just finding your room for a shower, so really shouldn't be a challenge .