Accessibility work isn't sexy or fun, but really should be required. To me there is a big difference between "on our agenda to resolve" and "we have decided to make this a priority". Even though accessibility is the law, there isn't a lot of industry regulation in video games, so it really is only companies that have decided to be industry leaders who are prioritizing this. Obviously no one is pearl clutching here about losing donator funds because a few players may leave due to accessibility issues, but I really hope the Torn community would come together and say - come on guys, you can do better.
And - if you are a visually impaired member and there is anything that I can do to assist your gameplay, please reach out. Im happy to research bazaars to find items you may want to purchase, or any other scut work around Torn that may be difficult with current setups.
If you are a faction leader who has visually impaired members, also feel free to reach out. Our faction prioritizes any information or resources that we can get to make game play as accessible as possible for our members, and we would be happy to share our processes.
On a side note, how excited are all of the fellow screen reader users about the upcoming Easter event? Can't wait to hear all about the eggs everyone finds. BLEH lol.
Edit:
To whom ever disliked my post, I don't like it either :p I would love to participate in the Easter event, but it's not possible. I made a sarcastic joke of it because it's just one more thing to either laugh or cry about. I chose laugh.
turning an awareness thread into a "let's shit on staff" thread isn't cool and i believe and hope that the people closely involved in this could agree with me.
i wasn't aware of this problem, as surely i'm not aware of many others for other people's disabilities and difficulties, so i could talk out of my ass here, but i don't think the focus of Torn's management on this is any different than the one put from others on similar games.
trying to maliciously pick a particular interpretation of bogie's words will do no good to your faction mates and will not bring a solution sooner.
I understand very well the inconveniences that you write here, the staff tries to make all the relevant updates and little by little include improvements in accessibility, but above all we should be grateful that there is a place where people with some bisexual needs can compete equally with others.
I am a screen reader user, I use Jaws as my main reader and NVDA as my secondary and I have had all the problems you can imagine but I have tried to find a solution, people who know me and have been able to cross many words with me can attest to what I say, and know that I do not give up easily.
There are many features that have changed in the last six months, but I invite all screen reader users to look for and consult the tools that their screen readers come with.
For example, Jaws has a bookmark and highlights option that I use a lot in Rw, and NVDA has many community-designed add-ons to improve navigation. regarding the bot, I haven't had any problems yet and it hasn't marked me as suspicious, so I can't give my opinion on that point, although previously my family was tired of helping me to pass the captcha (they are difficult for me because of the language).
P.S.: this year is my 7th year of being blind and 6 years of using screen readers, but some help from the staff would be great!
This is a very negative comment, coming from a person that this is his first easter; Dr N, and Torn tools has an option for easter which alerts you to the page that has an egg, in the same way with the graphic search engine of your reader you can find the eggs, making a quick scan before the egg is damaged by being too long in the sun.
Vision impaired player here! That would be superb and love that you are bringing awareness! My eyesight is deteriorating, and I rely on zoom for now, but eventually that won't be enough anymore and would like to be reassured that I can continue to do what I love!
While it may be possible for those who still have some vision and duo a reader/mouse to pick up the eggs on the page, I have spoken to several players like myself who are 100% reliant on a screen reader and they were not able to collect eggs in previous years. Having torn tools alerts me to items in the city, but I cannot pick them up. The only way I have been able to collect items in the city is to ask a sighted person to collect them for me. I doubt they will want to sit around for hours while I play Torn just to click on an egg when it spawns. It was not a negative comment, it was plain truth.
There are 3 important things you say, the first in previous years the compatibility of screen readers was very different, at this time both the readers and the technology in general has much accessibility and much more in browser applications, the map items are a set of features very different from easter eggs, easter eggs readers identify them as entities, the base language in Torn is php and is the most compatible with any reader but developers focus their compatibility with the most used readers on the market: Jaws, NVDA, VoiceOver, Talkback, you can ask the staff if they use any other screen reader and they will gladly give you the information, and if you don't use any that they don't mention you are possibly losing accessibility in Torn. The Torn map screen readers read it as an image, it is possibly developed in java (I don't know much about programming), but it is made this way so that citizens can search for the articles and not simply use a script to pick them up. I invite you to leave the past where it belongs and help to find solutions so that the small blind community in Torn can overcome all these difficulties and improve the gaming experience of many citizens.
So you know for certain that the scripting for the Easter event has been changed since last year and it does work with NVDA and Talk Back now? This is wonderful news! Why didn't you say that in the first place. Problem solved.
I see multiple comments of players caught in the AI detection while using screen readers. Not saying open the floodgates, but it might be nice if there were an opt-in consent option for the AI to track players claiming they are and build out the AI to at minimum not blast them, and at maximum allow some leeway to these players on things like easter egg events as long as they are opted in and the AI is satisfied with a high level of confidence that they match the patterns of accessibility users.
It's not perfect but it'd be an improvement from getting smacked around by the bot for playing differently.
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