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

To play our games, you'll need software which integrates with your screen reader. On Windows, many of our blind players use VipMud. But any standard MUD client should be fine. On the Mac, you can use the build-in Terminal app, which integrates nicely with VoiceOver. Or your favorite MUD client. 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!