Screenreaders

[Blackclaw]

One of the projects that the staff have been thinking about for some time now has been the opportunity to make NarniaMUCK more friendly for anybody who might be connecting to the game using a screenreader, a program that speaks text out loud for people who may find it challenging to read a lot of small print.

Now, since there's no visuals on NarniaMUCK, the whole game can be read out loud, but there are still barriers! Narnia, perhaps even moreso than most MU*s I've seen, uses a lot of ASCII art to mark delineations and add visual interest to the game, the most notable being the ASCII borders of room @descs and the lion on the connection screen. These visual flourishes look very pretty but they are dreadful for people using screenreaders. The program can't tell what's useful punctuation and what isn't, and is forced to read out loud the whole 80-character string of 'equals greater than pound sign pound sign square bracket'.

A while back, Fe made a change to the server which he talks about here, and today, he very kindly wrote us a program that reports to the game which port a character has connected from. This means that, very slowly, we can start going through the game's programs and putting in checks to make sure that extraneous punctuation is only being displayed if you're on the right port.

One of the first and most important changes was those ASCII borders in @descs. As of today, if you're connected to the game via port 2048, you should no longer see those borders. Please let me or another staff member know if there's an issue, especially if you happen to be using a screenreader. As well, if there are any other inconvenient pieces of text that make your life more difficult on a screenreader, please let me know or post them in this thread, as I intend to go through the game for the next little while and ferret them out.

[Blackclaw]

Fun expert special bonus facts for expert NarniaMUCK players facts post!

If you've got an ASCII-heavy @desc like, for instance, mine, and you want to get on board the screenreader consideration train without sacrificing your undeniably sweet visual creative expression, you can piggyback on the lsedit macro we use to display room @descs. Just set your character's @desc to {lexec:desc} and write three lsedit lists on your character object: 'border' and 'border2' for, obviously, the border, and 'desc1' for the actual text of your desc. 'border2' and 'border' usually are identical but don't necessarily have to be. You need all three lists or you will inherit @desc components from the room you're in.

[Mariel]

I want to let you know that I am a screenreader user, and yes, there is quite a lot of extranious punctuation, most commonly on the connection screen and at the beginning and end of location descriptions. I don't know if there is a way to modify or fix that, but I wamted to notify you in case there is a way to fix it.

[Blackclaw]

Which port are you connecting to the game with? 2050, or 2048?

[Mariel]

I connect using port 2050.

[Blackclaw]

Try connecting using port 2048! We've done some screenreader optimization on that port, like taking the ASCII art out of the connect screen and the room borders.

[Mariel]

I tried connecting with port 2048, and it works a lot better with my screenreader. Thank you for making a screenreaded friendly port.

[Mariel]

I did find some extranious punctuation in the description of Cair Paravel's kitchen cellar. Other than that, it is very good. I'm very happy with it so far. I only found the extranious punctuation in one room, so it is not a major problem. I thought I might let you know about it ⠁⠝⠽⠺⠁⠽⠲

[Blackclaw]

Sorry it took me so long to figure out how to do this, but the issue where Lantern.muf descs don't check for the screenreader port should be fixed now.