Seeking Accessibility Feedback
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If you or someone you know plays MUSHes with a screen reader or other accessibility device, I would love to get feedback about how to make AresMUSH more accessible to everyone. Feel free to PM me or post here or on the Ares forums.
If you haven't played Ares, you can log onto the test server (formerly BSGU, now a sandbox) or check out Chontio, @skew's new Star Wars game running on Ares.
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@faraday said in Seeking Accessibility Feedback:
If you or someone you know plays MUSHes with a screen reader or other accessibility device, I would love to get feedback about how to make AresMUSH more accessible to everyone. Feel free to PM me or post here or on the Ares forums.
One of the Evennia devs uses a screenreader (hence why accessibility is baked into Evennia's codebase); if no one else turns up, I imagine one of us can reach out to him and see if he can help with feedback on accessibility.
a.k.a. Packetdancer (or "Pax" for short)
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@sparks Thanks. I’ve done my best with general s/w accessibility practices, but it’s good to know how close to the mark it is and what MU-specific features might help.
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Unfortunately, while I am legally blind, I don't use any modification programs or whatever, I just game with my head really close to my monitor and stack stuff on my left.
Just making sure the colors you use make a huge difference, though, on games with ANSI and similar systems. I can't count how many games love to use dark blue on black. -.-
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@paris said in Seeking Accessibility Feedback:
Just making sure the colors you use make a huge difference, though, on games with ANSI and similar systems. I can't count how many games love to use dark blue on black. -.-
My personal hobbyhorse here is "never use colour as the sole indicator of anything".So many games change something from, say, red to green but leave the actual text untouched and expect that to be all that's needed. I'm sure it's been a problem for people using screenreaders, and I know it is for people who by preference or health needs (migraine triggers, eyestrain, etc.) don't use colour in their client in the way the coder expects.
It's probably not an issue with Ares, given you've already been thinking about things. But man it drives me up a wall.
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I feel like it should be possible to find the shift needed to cover color blindness in one or more forms, but that may be easy to handle on the client end.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@misadventure said in Seeking Accessibility Feedback:
I feel like it should be possible to find the shift needed to cover color blindness in one or more forms, but that may be easy to handle on the client end.
Well the issue there is that there are several kinds of color-blindness. This site is good for understanding the impact of the different kinds.
So unless you actually have the player input which kind they are and custom-design colors for them, you can't really make a shift that works well for everyone.
As @Ninjakitten says, it's better to use color as an auxiliary signal rather than the primary source of information. In Ares, for instance, all success messages are green and errors red, but the underlying text in either case clearly states what's going on. The colors are nice but not essential.
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My specific gripe is less with the color involved, and more with the values: dark text on a dark background, light text on a light background, etc. I have to play with a dimmed monitor because of a severe light sensitivity (thanks lupus) and that affects how well I can distinguish between text and BG (also thanks lupus, since that's what damaged my eyesight and continues to do so). Just be conscious of that when picking text colors, as some people feel that dark ansi is perfectly visible against black or dark gray, and it only is on some superbright monitors.
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@paris Yes, contrast is also important. Especially on a MU environment where you only have a handful of colors to work with and need to handle both light and dark backgrounds. In Ares, each game can configure their color schemes, so that's more of an implementation detail than something central to the engine. Also, many clients let you customize your color values, so you can adjust if a particular game makes poor choices. But still good for folks to be aware of.
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@faraday said in Seeking Accessibility Feedback:
@misadventure said in Seeking Accessibility Feedback:
I feel like it should be possible to find the shift needed to cover color blindness in one or more forms, but that may be easy to handle on the client end.
Well the issue there is that there are several kinds of color-blindness. This site is good for understanding the impact of the different kinds.
So unless you actually have the player input which kind they are and custom-design colors for them, you can't really make a shift that works well for everyone.
As @Ninjakitten says, it's better to use color as an auxiliary signal rather than the primary source of information. In Ares, for instance, all success messages are green and errors red, but the underlying text in either case clearly states what's going on. The colors are nice but not essential.
Hrm. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make it so players could choose what colors to use for certain things, like messages or what not. But that could be cool. Guess that would also be dependent upon said player also having a client that supports a wide range of colors as well.
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We've got a few colorblind players on Chontio, and I've been piping feedback back to @faraday as it comes up. Its been minimal. Things like... the default AresCentral setting for pages was
%xb, I think? It's%xh%xgnow (or something). We will continue to keep eyes open!And, ofc, if anyone sees anything on Chontio that touches on accessibility, just lemme know (or, ya know, let Farday know).
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Volunds code suite allows gor a global color scheme and then for each player to set their own if they want.
