Re: Just wanted to provide an update on Max-Lib
@18
You say it makes things easier by adding different UIS, I think, but if a sighted dev is going to make their game accessible, they'd do that anyway wouldn't they?
The problem is that making a game blind accessible as a sighted developer currently has these problems:
1. The developer is sighted and tells blind players how to play. There are already multiple modes that blind people may prefer to use, and they are forced to use a suboptimal one created by what a sighted player thinks is better.
2. The developer has to actually, well, develop the accessibility instead of end users referencing some documentation that describes how the objects are mapped out and building out the accessibility themselves from a fork of one of the currently existing accessibility modules. Even if the docs don't exist the actual work of getting a custom module working for a game developed with max would be relatively trivial to start and can be smoothed out over time by a community since its a messaging based system.
Also, if a developer is developing their own accessible UI, this is only part of a larger single game UI that they have constructed. It still can't be changed or reinterpreted.
To me it sounds like you're trying to make a tool that doesn't need to exist because if sighted devs want to add accessibility they'll do it and if they won't then they won't. You can't force them to make their games accessible you no.
Most devs would be more willing to make their games accessible outside of specific circumstances (mostly competitive gaming or very pretentious developers) but the problem is that the information, tools and technical requirements are way too much to expect from a privately sourced piece of code. Max basically takes the UI components of a game and abstracts them and can be connected with other engines/languages. So, they don't actually have to do the work since Max rearranges the UIs based on the end user's preferences instead.
So you have a way of adding bleeps and sonar and things to a sighted game?
Absolutely. So basically, it would create an environment that your UI interacts with, and part of that absolutely could be producing sonar and bleeps. Especially if it creates a geometric space where you can calculate proximity to walls and stuff. A generalist application would probably have some limitations, but because I want to make several open source accessibility modules, these can be used as starters; and the community can produce their own. Actually I highly recommend once we get a few starter modules working and walk people through it to encourage development of blind starter modules built by blind people to avoid the whole "blind peopel playing sighted UIs" shit. From there, we can customize modules to be custom fit for each game, essentially producing accessibility mods for Max-compatible games.
The way this interacts with the industry is that Max's accessibility and UI power is incredibly high, and because it's open source and not owned by a private company (and i'm going to try to keep it as much of a community project as possible), it's essentially a powerful piece of open source code that can be used on a ton of platforms. To encourage its use I'm also going to be producing game builders, an RPG engine clone for example. A bonus of these engines is since they are more standardized than general game development, games built in them have a high level of predictability in their UIs making accessibility much easier to develop for.
It's not something that's going to be integrated into every game. The idea is to encourage it to spread as far as it possibly can, by targeting developers and bypassing corporations, which developers don't want to deal with anyways (seriously nobody wants to fucking deal with royalties ok lol). Devs dont want to give these companies their money if they don't have to, offering a free alternative that integrates with commercial solutions is a powerful alternative.
Also worth pointing out is that Max would also have a high level of moddability in its games, which would be another attraction to using the system.
It honestly still sounds to me like you're doing something that a sighted dev could do if they cared.
Stop moralizing the developer's actions. Games are complicated pieces of software and game developers are among the most abused in the software industry because of the tight deadlines. A lot of independent contractors use this tactic to make money off of this shit and still can't do their jobs right.
How are you going to market this to x amount of devs when the small ones probably don't know or care about accessibility and the big ones already have accessibility implemented and if they don't chances are they won't care?
A lot of game developers really do want to build accessible games but don't have the necessary resources to do so. Accessibility is an extremely niche knowledge pool and thus is usually relegated to expensive contractors. Accessibility is also a niche market. But I think most people would be willing to accomidate it if you could say "hey I added this plug in that you can use with your game that will let people plug in accessibility mods and be able to use it" as long as it didn't interfere with the gameplay - and that's why it might be difficult to integrate Max into competitive games that require precise timings.
And honestly, even one game that integrates Max is a win because it allows us to experiment with the software in the field and gives disabled people and modders a way to work with Max. We can work with the dev and understand better how to accomidate Max, and that's how Max spreads.
Also, do you have screen reader support with this project? The last time I checked your games were running sapi and while that might be ok for some sighted people, screen reader users will want to use their own screen reader.
Older versions of Max had NVDA support, but Jaws is notoriously hostile and I couldnt' find any documentation for their API online, and I'm a bit worried about implementing an open source one that involved us reverse engineering theirs. A little scary if you ask me. Obviously the newest versions would have screen reader support since its a much lower level project than before.
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