Accessibility

We welcome blind and visually impaired players! Here's a partial list of the steps we take to ensure accessibility:

MUD clients and screen readers

Many of our blind players connect to our games with VipMud. But any standard MUD client should be fine. In addition we test with TinTin++, Mudlet, and MUDRammer. The website section for each game specifies connection settings.

Commands for the visually impaired

Command-line alternatives to GUI menus, popup windows and other visual controls exist for all actions. Commonly-used examples include attribute commands such as Energy, Health, Intelligence, Armor and so on. The complete list is here: list of commands assisting the visually impaired.

While logged-in with a MUD client, messages displayed to GUI users as popup windows are instead written to the Game Channel. We've carefully translated thousands of in-game popup signs to text for non-visual clients. Additionally, GUI users can use the BlindMode command to toggle the same behavior. Our Help robot is also blind-aware. Its responses are fine-tuned for non-visual clients.

The Blindfriendly command tells whether the Zone you're in is friendly to non-visual clients. If the answer's no, a short explanation follows, for example, "Large numbers of NPCs move quickly through here, making it hard for screen readers to keep up."

Web site optimization

• The SmartMonsters web site is HTML5 and implements WAI-ARIA Landmark Roles for screen reader optimization.
• Our site markup is straightforward, doesn't rely on images, and implements sensible tab orders.
• An account setting called "Blind-Friendly" replaces images throughout the web site with text equivalents, making the site 100% textual, 100% image-free.
• We test with VoiceOver, NVDA, and ChromeVox.

Our games are always free to play. Get started today!