Newcomer / Intro Flying Literally BLind, or, Elite Accessibility, Text-to-speech, etc.

Caplin

C
HI All,

I wanted to write a quick post and introduce myself. I'm a new commander who bought the game on enthusiastic recommendation of a friend who currently plays, and thought it might be at least partially accessible for my purposes. I am totally blind, and have been since birth, but have access to a variety of technology to use computers and entertain myself.

I have discovered that my screen reading system is able to read a lot of the in-game menus, thanks to its OCR feature. THis isn't quite ideal, as it sometimes either misses things or puts in strange OCR errors, but this is frankly a lot better than I had hoped for. I am able to mostly read the navigation screen,, and obviously use any web-based tools available to get system information.

Where I would appreciate some guidance and possibly help from the community is bridging the gap. AUdio output would be very helpful for a few situations, and my friend and I have come up with a few solutions which would make, say, targeting easier. A way to read the menus without having to OCR them first would be an ideal beginning.

I hope that we can find a way to move forward here. If anybody knows of any add-ons or in-game settings that might be beneficial, please pass them along. I firml believe that with a little imagination anything is possible.

THanks for your consideration. :)
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
Welcome to the forum, and to Elite Dangerous!

I can't say I have any recommendations or ideas for you, but hopefully some other helpful commanders will.
 

Caplin

C
It looks like Eddi, and perhaps other VoiceAttack plugins, will be very useful for me. I was very pleased with the amount of info it seems able to provide. I will certainly look into SPecial Effect. I was also hoping to hear from more technically-minded folk, perhaps people behind existing player tools, on what kinds of things might be possible.
 

Ian Phillips

Volunteer Moderator
Ian Phillips
Could you tell us more precisely what specific things would help you?

If you can outline a specific need, that would at least help people to know what they could be aiming to do to help.
 

Caplin

C
Ian Phillips said:
Could you tell us more precisely what specific things would help you?

If you can outline a specific need, that would at least help people to know what they could be aiming to do to help.
Click to expand...

Okay, specific needs time. Let's start with something fairly simple. At the moment, my screen reader makes navigating menus a bit tedious because I have to go through an extra step of OCR-ing the menus first, which is a little error-prone. I need a way to hear the option I've selected, ideally, and any context, without the added introduction of random OCR noise. This could probably be done fairly easily with an interface to the Windows text-to-speech system, for instance.

A second thought would be some kind of audio variation on the "time/distance gauge," to help me sort out targeting. My friend who recommended the game to me says that's presented visually. This is a bit more open to ideas, since I don't know what the visual representation conveys exactly.

Just a couple thoughts to get started with :) THanks for the warm welcome, all.
 

Caplin

C
Hi ALl,

THus far, I've been experimenting with the game and some add-ons. Elite Discovery seemsas though it's going to be quite useful for me, especially given the variety of voice output it offers.

A friend and I were streaming on Twitch earlier, and struggled with the sream delay and figuring out how to turn my ship around. SOme kind of audio cue when I'm facing the proper direction towards a navigation target would definitely be helpful. The two big areas at the moment are getting access to the game menus reliably, and figuring out how to fly. I suspect the first will be easier to arrange.

Is it okay to keep most discussion centered in this thread for now, or should I consider starting more targeted threads elsewhere in the forum? Thanks!
 

Nyxlplyx

N
I've been helping OP with trying to figure out what he can and can't accomplish in the game as it stands and so far it seems the biggest help would be adding the auditory cues for the target gimble, so he would know whether the target was in front, behind, etc.

Only other thing would be an audible collision warning. I know visually we see the "impact" warning when we're flying into something, but I feel by the time his OCR might reach it to tell him about it, the impact would already happen.

What I haven't figured out quite yet is a possible fix for getting back out of the "mail slot" in some stations, since there's nothing beyond the visual which really guides you to it. Though it seems like the auto-dock feature could easily have an auto-launch added to it as well, which would automatically pilot you back out beyond the mass lock distance.
 
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