Accessibility

[TomVal]

I'm a visually impaired MOULa player (to get a rough idea, I see the world in 160x120 resolution). I like adventures, I like Myst series, although I haven't played all the Myst games yet. I couldn't be in previous incarnations of MOUL because of region restrictions of publishers, and/or poor net connection. I've been in cavern since February 18, 2010. I've made up my mind about things I'd like to see improved concerning game accessibility.

The Myst universe is heavily visual. No captions are provided for active spots, speeches are missing subtitles as well. Active spots are marked only by slight change of the cursor appearance, I noticed it accidentally after several weeks in cavern. Some areas are very dark (some of those intentionally, as a part of a puzzle), which makes finding people there quite hard for me - yes, I'm meaning Ae'gura in the first place. The chat font can be enlarged, but not enough for my needs. Chat issues are handled gracefully by BabelBot (thanks OHB).

But there are potentially very useful, yet overLOOKed features. The caps in previous sentence are intentional, I'm meaning the "look" KI command, which is location-based and has a lot greater potential than just some humorous sentences and feather stuff.

Since this is a forum dedicated to Age creation, I'd like to mention some points which could greatly improve in-game experience for disabled people.

- Provide location descriptions for LOOK command. Try to mention things which could be easily overlooked otherwise and might require very thorough search (known as "pixel hunting" in 2D adventures). You may even define device descriptions for "operating spots", i.e. places where tha avvie is moved to operate a device.

- Don't rely on single aspect of perception when designing puzzles. When it's about color, try to include sound or shape, if it's about sound, add visual feedback too (infamous organ puzzle in the first Myst, not doable without a sound).

- For dark areas, provide us with some sort of flashlight - it can cease functioning if it's necessary for a puzzle.

- Don't forget to provide subtitles for speeches, or add their text into player's journal.

- When it becomes possible, add captions to active spots (even general ones as button, symbol, lever, etc. are a great help for me). There could be alway an option to turn those off.

- If some accessibility features could spoil the game for others, group them under the separate section, so that they may be used/avoided.

I have some client-specific suggestions as well, but I'll post them into separate topic.

[Chacal]

This is very valuable input. I think it is the first time we receive suggestions for accessibility.

Your timing is good, because PaladinOfKaos and others are working on a new client, and some of your suggestions require special programming on the client side.

For instance, an option could enable audible cues. Then putting the cursor over a hot spot could trigger a sound in addition to changing the cursor. People joining the Age, or chatting, could also generate sounds.

Also an option could increase the overall brightness of the rendering.

The option to automatically write down speeches into a journal is already implemented in Myst V, which shows it would be possible to do it with a new client. On the other hand, you can find speech transcriptions on the Web, and you can alt-tab to them during the game.

Thanks for writing this!

[kaelisebonrai]

Thank you for mentioning this, Tom, I'd actually quite like to experiment with accessibility functions like that.

( the below is just my understanding with my limited knowledge of the engine/etc. Please correct me if I'm wrong, and, I'd really like to hear examples of how to implement things, as that'd help me in understanding. =) )

I'm just wondering if /look is done entirely in the KI's code, if so, it may be... near impossible for fan Ages to implement this kind of thing. Well, technically its /possible/, but, it may not be... uh, how do i put it. "Practical"? Note that I feel it would be a /good/ thing to implement... The trouble being implementing it.

Its one of the same issues we're facing with new user created clothing, these things are global, and if one fan age alters it, it may.. well, essentially overwrite the previous fan Age's settings. The other option is to do it via the Offline KI, but, then, we have the trouble of coordinating that. =/

But, I could be entirely wrong, and this kind of thing /isn't/ done in the KI's python. (and I sincerely hope I /am/ wrong.)

As for aspects of perception - Great idea, and I'll have to remember to do that kind of thing in the future. =)

Dark areas... Not sure how we'd provide a flashlight, but, there is always /lite w or /glow >.>

Subtitles to speeches.. no idea how to implement that, or even how to add it to the player's journal. I assume some sort of journal thing is possible, though. (as Chacal said, its done in MystV)

Captions to active spots - awesome idea. =D

[OHB]

Tom your input is always valuable and thanks for posting this. I mentioned it @ the All Guilds Meeting, but I'll say it here again: accessibility features are at the top of my "thinks to bug Branan about" for PlasmaClient. We're gonna try to get it right

[diafero]

Indeed, /look is completely hard-coded in the KI. It is possible to have the ages overwrite that though, with some, but not too much effort, provided Offline KI is installed: I imagine something like a new function being added to the <agename>.py python file ("getLookText()"?), and Offline KI importing the python file called like the current age, and calling the function, before taking it's own list. However, having /look depend on the location you are in within the age is even more complicated, currently it's just checking for the age name and nothing else.

[Chacal]

It can be an entirely new /look function, or an entirely new function.
It would read data from a data file provided by the Age writer.
I'm thinking a specific kind of region (maybe with a specific name) that would trigger python code to fetch and display the text.

[diafero]

Well, a fan-age can not add any KI command at all. And the Python solution I suggested would allow the age writers to use any mechanism they want to add details to their messages. Including, but not restricted to, position in age, time of day, gender and clothing of player, or the amount of pie.

[TomVal]

Tom your input is always valuable and thanks for posting this. I mentioned it @ the All Guilds Meeting, but I'll say it here again: accessibility features are at the top of my "thinks to bug Branan about" for PlasmaClient. We're gonna try to get it right

Already emailed him my wishes

[GPNMilano]

Thanks for all the suggestions Tom. You might not remember me, I'm the one who helped you finish Ahnonay back when you first joined. (You were having issues finding the quabs i believe). It's great to see new players still around and offering great ideas to improve accessibility to Uru for eveyrone.

And the outpouring of support in this thread to those ideas, and the willigness to work on them by the developers here is what gives me hope that Uru truly does have a shot at being something great with the right people working on it's improvement and helping to develop it. This is truly Uru's future, and believe it or not it does look bright.

[N. Sigismund]

I agree with GPN - it's hard to see the same community here that I first joined back in April.