Accessibility for blind players

[lynxlynxlynx]

Yesterday we had an insightful discussion when a blind player and game designer came to the G3 chat. I'm summarizing it here in case anyone ever feels strongly enough to do something about it. More and more new games cater to them and hackers are working on things like Diablo 1 and FF VII to make it playable. As an engine project we have the upper hand to simple modding, but of course it's still complicated due to the type of games we support.

In general the mouse should be avoided and interactions converted to keyboard-navigable menus. TTS used for most unvoiced text.

• window/control navigation can be enumerated to be able to present it as a menu and/or tab through
  • controls with no text but tooltips can feed that into the menu tree / TTS
• area movement via controller like in mobile versions of the EEs (not sure if our controller code already does that)
  • sound cues when nearing impassable searchmap squares? Likely problematic in tight spots, maybe just ping on collision
• area interactions via enumerated interactables, also for movement to them
  • when the specific object like NPC, exit or door is selected have a ping sound playing faster when one is closer to the thing.
• combat with autopause on round end, enemy in sight
  • no aoe targeting on the ground , just on actors / choice of how many of whom to hit
  • same for summoning
• add extra keybindings for convenience
• spatial awareness is an unsolved problem (how to signal viewport position in larger areas?). In crowded areas the smallest resolutions might be preferable, so there's not too much actionable stuff available at the same time. In empty maps the opposite to make navigation simpler.
• some modding to circumvent or reinvent visual riddles. Things like color matching torches to the background in tob, boulder puzzle in iwd2, throne room puzzle in iwd ...