I know that we have screen reader capability and have had blind players before. I met three of them, and they were all very nice. I was also impressed with how they were able to remort.

Unfortunately, the spam of combat may be too hard for them to react. By the time they hear what is going on, they are too dead to retreat or flee.

I have also been looking at the mud community in general. The one group of players that is growing, across many top muds, are blind players or visually impaired players (like color blindness or very poor eyesight)

This makes sense because a text based world is one of the few games that a person with that disability could enjoy.

The world of Tempus would be a wonderful adventure for these blind and visually impaired players to be able to explore and interact in.

Perhaps it would be worth ithe time and energy, after the current changes that are lined up and implemented, to make Tempus more screen reader friendly (or have the option available).

How challenging of a project would this be for the imm team? Please let us know.

It's not an easy problem to solve for screen readers. Even if you had a player fighting one opponent, the melee spam alone can overwhelm a screen reader. Even supposing you solved this problem, and really there are only klunky solutions (i.e. three decimates become "You ANNIHILATE a wemic warrior's arms, legs, and face!"), you still wouldn't solve for when one player is fighting 8 opponents or a room full of mobs. Then you have some combat abilities that are very spammy, such as area of effects like chain lightning, hailstorm, or meteor storm. Following this, you have some abilities that are quite spammy in their normal use: combo comes to mind.

In the end, this is a "problem" the coders have generally avoided by placing it under the "if it ain't broke don't fix it category," as we don't think sighted players would appreciate changes to combat messaging for the sake of the non-sighted population. We have generally been responsive and have made other improvements for non-sighted players, but avoid combat messaging changes.

Having decent eyesight, I am unaware of how these "screen readers" work. Is it just translating text to speech? Is it some kind of fast-moving braille system like the blind guy in the movie Sneakers? I'm assuming speech…if so, is it just getting bogged down so you are 12 lines back when you are getting killed?

"By the time they hear what is going on, they are too dead to retreat or flee."

I hate it when that happens.

And Tower, yes, I assume that they're dying while the screen reader is 12 lines back.

Maybe an option to gag/simplify battle for the vision impaired would work. That way it does not lead to major changes to everyone and the screen reader can work well.

Perhaps the idea to group the double, triple, and quadruple attacks to one line is the best fix. Gag misses.

Combo could be limited to unleash a combo for the reader.

It is a lot of work. At the same time, if our intention is to grow the userbase, it makes sense to make our world easily accessible to one of the only groups of mud players that is growing.

I also feel it is pretty cool for a visually impaired individual to be able to enjoy the richness of tempus. One of the few games they could enjoy.

When talking to the three blind players from before they said they just turned up the talking speed when fighting. Not sure how effective it was since they still died quite a bit…

Yea. Those three were really nice players. Gutted through spam deaths and remorted too. In the end it was just too rough and they left.

They must have really enjoyed tempus (aside from spam death) to really keep at it when talking with them, they enjoyed the world and wished they could respond faster (less spammy fighting).