Re: Screen Reader Support in Audio Games
The biggest issue for me is that SAPI cannot be interrupted while a screen reader can. For example, playing a game like Entombed is ridiculous with SAPI, because I have to sit and wait until it's done reading everything. However, I assume speech interrupt for SAPI can be added to a program? I know Perilous Hearts does this, but all other games and programs I've used that utilize SAPI don't, so I can only conclude it's laziness or lack of knowledge on the part of the developer.
What exactly is OneCore? My understanding is that it's a completely different speech synthesizer that's not at all related to SAPI. It would be interesting to see this implemented into games going forward, provided the speech could be interrupted at any time.
I have to agree about the timing issues with screen readers. I don't find it an issue most of the time, but I definitely understand the problems you can run into. I wonder how NVDA's new speech system will help this? Are they coding a way to detect when the synthesizer stops speaking and convey this information to the controller client and your program?
I like the idea of different speech channels for different pieces of information. A Hero's Call does this well, so it would be interesting to see where this could go in future projects. My only complaint about screen reader support right now is that literally any keystroke will silence speech, which can be annoying in some situations. However, it's also a blessing for the speech interrupt reasons I discussed above. Would it be possible to implement SAPI, OneCore, and the screen reader in one project? Then you could have different synthesizers speaking different pieces of information.
While we're talking about screen readers, I have a couple more questions that could create more points that haven't been discussed yet. Is it possible to send information to Narrator like you can with NVDA? I assume not since there isn't an API to my knowledge, but I could very well be wrong. I think Narrator output would be particularly cool, especially when Narrator is a built-in component of Windows and is getting better all the time.
My other question concerns Braille. As far as I know, none of the games that use screen readers can output to Braille. Why is this? Is it a limitation of BGT, NVDA, the NVDA Controller Client, or a combination of these things? I am not a JAWS user, so I can't speak to JAWS, although I know it doesn't really play nice with games or any application that wants to use the keyboard. I know Braille output may not be practical in all games, but it's something that's interested me for a while.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
