Accessibility Tools for FG2

[PneumaPilot]

One of the guys who plays Hunter (New World of Darkness Ruleset) with us is totally blind. Right now, he just connects with Ventrilo with the rest of us, and I log him into FG on my machine by connecting another instance of the software via localhost. That lets the rest of us see his character's portrait in the top left, and it lets me as the Storyteller have access to his stats, etc. I use Windows Messenger to send private messages to him, since he can't read the chat pad (because he isn't actually running FG, I'm running it for him).

All this has me thinking about some accessibility functionality, because I would really like him to get his own copy of FG and be able to read the chat pad and roll his own dice there (currently, he uses a computerized dice roller for blind people that speaks the results to him). Here's my current list of desired features - some of them can be instantly implemented, others might need some help from the developers:

• Slash commands that report the value of a desired stat on the character sheet (eg. /strength)
• An overall 'Blind Mode' that when enabled (eg. /blind) will dump information into the chat pad for that player that other players just see naturally. The main thing I'm thinking about here is a way to put a description on an image to be shared so that the description is dumped to the chat pad for all players with /blind enabled as soon as the image is displayed to the rest of the players.
• A change to the dice roller for all /blind users that only reports the final results of other players' rolls (eg. "5 Successes" or "21") instead of printing out each die result. This keeps the handicapped player's screen reader from speaking the result of each die. Now, each die result SHOULD be displayed when the /blind player rolls.
• A good way to iterate through a windowlist through the chat pad. For instance, in the nWoD ruleset, there is a windowlist for Equipment. I want them to be able to type '/equipment' and have it give them the first item on the list. If they press 'n' it should immediately give them the next item on the list, if they press 'y' it should give them all the rest of the information about that item. Here's an example: "/weapon [enter] Sig Sauer P229 [wait for response] [presses n - no enter] Springfield M4 [wait for response] [presses y - no enter] Springfield M4, Damage 4, Range 200/400/800, etc. etc."

I think I have some good ideas about how to do some of this, but I'm not entirely sure about how to make it easy for the Storyteller (DM, GM, whatever) to add text descriptions to images. It should require no XML editing. There ought to be some kind of right-click to add field or something.

I'd like to hear some other ideas about this. And I'd especially love to hear if anyone has attempted this before. I know that there is a sizable blind gaming community, and if FG had something like this, it might immediately allow it to pick up a good number of new users.

[PneumaPilot]

In a related issue, those of us who play in my game on Thursday nights have all of our F1-F12 shortcuts set to roll 1-12 D10s. Setting those up is something that is difficult to explain to most seeing noobs; I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to talk a blind guy through it. I would like to be able to have those keys setup by default to our settings. Does anyone know a way of doing that?

[Davi]

This would be FANTASTIC!

[Griogre]

In a related issue, those of us who play in my game on Thursday nights have all of our F1-F12 shortcuts set to roll 1-12 D10s. Setting those up is something that is difficult to explain to most seeing noobs; I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to talk a blind guy through it. I would like to be able to have those keys setup by default to our settings. Does anyone know a way of doing that?

While I can understand how this would be difficult for someone that is blind. For a normal player this is pretty easy:
1) Type /die 1d12 in the chat line and don't hit enter.
2) Drag and drop the text from the chat line onto F1.
3) Drag and drop the hot key back into the chat *line* and edit it so it says /die 2d12 and drag and drop it in F2. Repeat for each key.

You can just drop dice in each hot key after picking up the d12 and right clicking but this method is probably faster once you have more than 5 dice, especially if the players are new.

[mr_h]

In a related issue, those of us who play in my game on Thursday nights have all of our F1-F12 shortcuts set to roll 1-12 D10s. Setting those up is something that is difficult to explain to most seeing noobs; I can't imagine the difficulty of trying to talk a blind guy through it. I would like to be able to have those keys setup by default to our settings. Does anyone know a way of doing that?

I've been wondering if there was a way to copy ones hotkeys over to another user. It appears to be possible to copy a GM's hot keys (they are in the application folder\campaigns\CAMPAIGNNAME\usersettings\hotkeys _host.xml). I haven't found the individual users hotkeys though. Anyone know where those are stored?

[Griogre]

I *think* they may be in the cache tied in by user name. So it may be possible to start a second instance of FG, login with a certain username, setup the hot keys and then send the cache to the player and tell him to log in with that user name.

[Tenian]

Slash commands that report the value of a desired stat on the character sheet (eg. /strength)

That would have to be something you code into the ruleset because different systems use different stats.

It would probably be better if you made a command like: /report Strength

You could even write it so it was generic enough to return most of the fields on the character sheet, but obviously this would would probably require a more complex syntax and knowledge of the character sheet structure.

[Phystus]

Is the plan to have Windows Narrator or the like read the chat sceen to him? I'd want to test that first...

I just tried that very thing, to satisfy my own curiosity. I fired up Narrator, endured it droning on about the contents of the Narrator window, and fired up FG. Which crashed on the startup screen.

Not a very scientific test, but discouraging.

Anyway, I do think this is a terrific concept, and I hope you can get it to work.

~P

[PneumaPilot]

All the blind people I know use a program called JAWS to read their screen for them. It is a lot more sophisticated than Narrator, and you can even script it to only read certain parts of the screen and not others, or to read things in a particular order.

As far as the slash commands go for accessing data, I think that it most certainly has to be ruleset specific. I would want it to be as fast as possible for the impaired person to access a stat. something like /str or /strength is acceptable, but anything longer is starting to get tedious.

I'm pretty disappointed that there's not an easier way to create a default hotkey setup, since ours is practically a part of the ruleset - absolutely necessary for quick rolling given the 'rules lite' nature of our ruleset.

Well, this is a rather large project to try and tackle, especially when I've got so much else to do for the sighted people in our group. It is sort of low on my priority list, since my friend may never break down and buy the program no matter how much work I do on his behalf. Still, I do want to try it, I just wanted to know if anyone else ever had before I got too far along. My friend and I are supposed to try the FG demo out with JAWS here pretty soon. I'll pass along our findings when we get 'em.

Thanks for the interest.

[Wargamer777]

I'm not sure if it will help, but you could try using Crossloop to remote control into his desktop and setup the hot keys for him.

Of course, this is dependent on JAWS being able to tell him what access code is presented in crossloop for you to connect to him to remote control.

https://www.crossloop.com