For blind people...

[Cenghiz]

Two of my friends who are blind are playing Arm now. They are well-going but... The descriptions of the rooms are too long to view. And brief doesn't tell them when to go south to enter the tavern. At the moment I told the places of the most necessary places as 4n12e2n and such, but sometimes they can't count properly.
Would an immortal mind adding some signs as "A sign pointing south with a picture of beer" to main roads? It would really increase their playing capacity.
Thanks in advance.

[Marc]

Tell them to type "exits"

[EDIT:]

Wait, I will.

Type "exits" no appostraphies

:lol:

[Cenghiz]

Oh sorry, I didn't know that command. OK they will. Sorry for the trash message.

[crymerci]

Actually, I think that would be a good idea. For example, if you have full descriptions on, you might see:

Caravan Road [ESW]
  Stretching itself out here is a long road, paved in rough yellowy
brown sandstone, covered with reddish dust and sand, and wide enough that at
least four caravans could pass through.  The sun-browned backs of slaves
march along, carrying goods.  The sky's blood-red glory shines from above
the main gate, highlighting its ominously smooth stones.  
  Shouts and cheers sound from a fenced hardscrabble south of here.  
The lean black elven woman runs gracefully along here.

But if you have brief mode on, (or perhaps some in-between mode) you would just see:

Caravan Road [ESW]
   Shouts and cheers sound from a fenced hardscrabble south of here.  
The lean black elven woman runs gracefully along here.

Basically it would only hide the default room desc that is the same as in every other room of that type, but show anything out of the ordinary.

Am I the only one confused by blind people playing a text game?

Or do you mean like less english speaking people or something that just dont have the vocabulary to read through all these descriptions?

[Anonymous]

Am I the only one confused by blind people playing a text game?

Text to speech software makes it all happen.

[Cenghiz]

"Jaws", software for blinds... They may read something faster than me. Really. The computer's speaker just blubbers but they understand each word.
But our eyes choose what to read and "Jaws" can't, so after learning the basics they typed "brief". Now with "exits", they're able to wander around.
Thanks all.

[John]

Am I the only one confused by blind people playing a text game?

I've heard of a few blind people playing muds now. I think it's pretty cool that they can. Now all they need are brail keyboards.

[Angela Christine]

Am I the only one confused by blind people playing a text game?

I've heard of a few blind people playing muds now. I think it's pretty cool that they can. Now all they need are brail keyboards.

Not if they learn touch typing.  I'm not sure how well brail keyboards would work well.  When you read brail you move your fingers over the markings very lightly, and develop the sensitivity in you fingertips.  When you type you hit the keys much more firmly, and hitting the brail bumps firmly would tend to irritate and desensitize your fingers.

Learning touch typing isn't that hard.  Instead of looking at the keys, the program could call out which key you are hitting.  A whole classroom of blind people learning to type that way would be funny though.  Instead of mere clattering, there would be clattering plus a host of speakers all calling out "FFF EEE SSS".  

AC

[Cenghiz]

Nope... They're using usual keyboards... The software, "Jaws" just reads the keys they typed quickly. (Really quickly)

[Shinigami]

There are braille-type keyboards out-there, but for the better part they run the same way as braille-typewriters, the computer simply reconfigures it into the letters that we (the non-visually challenged) recognize.

There's a lot of really cool stuff out there for blind people.  I tried to hook a good friend of mine on Arm about 3 years ago who is completely blind.  He never quite "got it", but it was amazing to help him try.

Shinigami

[Lirs]

I worked for a few years as the librarian for my country's  National School for the Blind.  There are a number of speech programmes out there such as JAWs and there is also something that gives a braille -output- for blind users (little plastic dots pop up in the letter patterns).  However, the QWERTY keyboard is still used.

Its becoming more and more common for blind people not to learn braille and use other means to get information.  Braille is not easy to learn, in actuality only about 10% of the blind community here can read braille, the rest rely on electronic or audio alternatives.  

And ... when I told people I worked for the Foundation for the Blind the most commonly asked question was....
"Oh, so you know sign language then?"

-Lirael-

[Callisto]

Blind people playing muds with voice software? Really? That's something else..  I can't even imagine how that would work in a game like Armageddon. The text just moves so fast and you need to be able to hammer out commands and such in quick order, it just seems a little unreal someone could do that without being able to see.

What kind of characters do they play? With combat spam and all it just seems like it would be immensely difficult to play anything short of tavern sitters and such.

Do they use the internet at all, in its general sense of search engines and websites and such? I ask because I know a rather cute couple who hang out at the same club as I do who've been blind since birth.. well one is blind, the other has some rare sight thing where she sees the world in odd cubes, cones and  bright colors and whatnot, I'm not sure what the deal with that is, though. Whenever we're lounging around or whatever, they seem pretty interested in hearing about a lot of things like what the people from their favorite TV shows and movies look like, what the internet is like, what different paintings look like, etc.

I mean I guess there isn't a lot I can do about the TV aspect of things, but if there's software out there that can let blind people check out the internet and such, I wouldn't mind being able to pass along the information to them.

You can PM me if you don't want to discuss things in the public forum, Cenghiz, but if you could find out about that and let me know, I would really appreciate it.

[Samoa]

Blind people playing muds with voice software? Really? That's something else..  I can't even imagine how that would work in a game like Armageddon. The text just moves so fast and you need to be able to hammer out commands and such in quick order, it just seems a little unreal someone could do that without being able to see.

That's nothing; I had a blind friend who played on a hack and slash PK encouraged mud.  Not only that, but he was one of the really feared players.  Always sorta found it amazing.

[Angela Christine]

Do they use the internet at all, in its general sense of search engines and websites and such?

Plain text is better than more "modern" type websites with a lot of graphics and flash animation.  Oh, and ASCII graphics are awful because the text to speech software reads it as a series of dot-dash-backslash type stuff.  I remember one blind guy on a mud had a terrible time because in some areas the text was bracketed by dash lines like this:

----------------------------------------------------------

Which caused his softwear to say "dash dash dash" over and over.    


Anyway, here's an article on blind web users.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,47054,00.html

Angela Christine

[John]

That's just mean AC. Now whenever blind people listen to this thread they're going to be bombarded with "dash dash dash"

Plain text is better than more "modern" type websites with a lot of graphics and flash animation.

A good browser for them in that case would be lynx. That or they just disable pictures in IE.