Re: Developer questions for you all
First, I'd say to a VI computer user, a screen reader is literally the equivalent of reading text, it's the voice you read your emails with, write any work that needs writing with etc.
Therefore, it's absolutely fine in games where text is a usable medium of interaction. However, obviously just as a sighted user wouldn't want to play text games all the time, Vi users wouldn't want to listen to a screen reader all the time.
there are many game types after all, EG most real time games, that just wouldn't work with text alone, plus of course, audio can provide its own benefits in terms of atmosphere, character acting etc.
The only thing which some people dislike is using voicing for things like in game menus and stats, which might as well be read by a screen reader, since often the interaction is slower than a person is used to (many advanced screen reader users have their voices set at high speed).
For me this isn't a complete no no, though I understand the objection others have to this practice.
Another option some developers use is output to an inbuilt system voice like microsoft sapi, but not necessarily a screen reading program.
whatever option is chosen though, it's always important if the player needs to listen to in game audio and the screen reader or whatever, to allow the player to change the game settings for things like background music volume, and, if outputting to microsoft Sapi or another system voice, let the player customise the voice speed within the game, since slow synth voices can grate if your used to something faster.
Again, some people object to the use of Microsoft Sapi for direct output, often because they have superior commercial voices on their systems, though this objection is falling off as Microsoft's voice quality increases (the Sapi voices with Windows Xp were really rather horrible).
As to system requirements, I use NVdA, though with the nuance vocaliser voice which is a commercial one. I previously used a fully commercial screen reading program called Supernova, but found windows 10 support very lacking.
Other than NVdA the most frequent screen reader in use is Jaws for Windows, though these days a lot of Jaws users also hav NVdA as a backupp, and I believe browser wise the two programs are roughly equal in capability, though don't quote me.
If however your going to develop a stand alone windows game for screen reader output, why not just use The tolk library found here, which pretty much supports output to all common commercial screen readers for Windows, and microsoft Sapi as well.
Browser wise I use Chrome myself, which I'd tentatively say is probably the most commonly used browser these days, though people of course have their preferences.
In terms of games to play, I personally don't mind whether the game is downloadable or not. Browsers are good for text based games because screen readers by default have a lot of ways to interact with standard browser controls, headings, buttons, links etc, and reading of Alerts through Aria etc, although I can think of some very good examples of downloadable text games too such as warsim.
In the past, browser games were also almost all exclusively mmorpgs, though this is changing as tech advances, which is a good thing imho.
In addition to playing on Windows or via web browser, another common device for gaming is Iphone. Since Ios has a really good built in screen reader in voiceover which lends itself to accessible game development, EG easy ways to add labels to controls, there is a large number of accessible games produced for the platform and these days it's probably the second most common gaming system for blind gamers behind Windows.
There are also some very dedicated Blind Android users as well, (though less over all than Ios and far less than Windows), and some games for that platform, though I can't say too much about Android as it's not a system I've tried personally.
In terms of game types, I shared some thoughts in the other topic, but generally speaking what people are looking for most in this community, is complexity.
Since the dos days there have always been plenty of traditional games accessible, there are god knows how many versions of Blackjack. Likewise, there are more than a few hear and react audio games, and so many audio space invaders remakes they've pretty much become their own genre.
Occasionally over the years we've had a developer turn up with the idea of an audio adventure, but usually because even the idea of navigating by sound is novel to them, we just end up with great sounding, but ultimately hollow games with what is in audio terms fairly basic reaction based gameplay.
Obviously everyone has their own ideas and preferences, but personally, having sat around this community for a stupidly long time, I'd say the thing people like most are games that require all their attention, judgement and logic, not just games that play like audio boppit.
BTW, if you want an instant crash course in audiogames, Check out crazy party. It works as a series of minigames (over 180 these days I think), plus a battle based ccg, and between both of them, you should see pretty much everything that is possible whilst listening to awesome 16 bit era homages in the music .
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