1.11.1 Screenreader Guide

Welcome to Achaea! This help file is a guide to help new players who use screenreaders become acquainted with Achaea first and cut down on unnecessary information until you become more familiar with the game and the world. These tips have been provided by our own players who use screenreaders and are by no means exhaustive, but we hope they will help you get started!


Section 1: Basics

Many help files and instructions provided by the game indicate commands that you can type by noting the commands in all capital letters. If you are able to configure your screenreader to spell out instances of all capital letters, it may help you going forward when reading help files or receiving help from other players, who tend to use the same convention.

First, to avoid being overwhelmed by excessive text in the game, begin by typing the following configuration options:

CONFIG SCREENREADER ON
This turns on the screen reader configuration in the game and helps reduce the excess text clutter you might otherwise receive.

CONFIG MAPSHOW OFF
This turns off the graphical ASCII map the game provides, which can be confusing for a screenreader.

CONFIG ROOMDESC BRIEF
This makes it so that when you first walk into a room, you only see the title of the room, and the items, mobiles, and players in the room. You will not see the entire several sentences long description of the room. You can always look at the entire description of a room by typing LOOK while in the room.


Section 2: Communication

To cut down on excessive text for the time being from the various communication channels players use, it can be helpful to begin by turning off certain channels. Once you are more adjusted, you can turn the ones you want back on.

Generally, you can turn channels on or off by typing the channel's name, then adding OFF or ON without a space after the channel name (example: M A R K E T O F F with no spaces).

The market channel and shouts are already turned off as a novice, but if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can turn off a few additional channels:

CT (your organisation's main communication channel)
You can turn it off by typing C T O F F with no spaces.

If you are a novice in Mhaldor, you are directed to speak on CLT, rather than CT. If you need to turn this off until you can set up your screenreader, do so with C L T O F F, with no spaces.

TELLS, which are direct in-character messages from other players. These may be very useful to ask for help and turning them off is not recommended. There is also some more information below in this file.
If you do need to turn TELLS off, however, you can turn them off with T E L L S O F F with no spaces. 

Again, to turn these channels back on, type the channel name, then, without a space, type ON instead of OFF.

You might wish to turn TELLS, CT (and/or CLT) back on sooner rather than later. These channels are where other players may offer you help. Asking questions through these channels can help you become familiar with and connect with people in your organisation. 

NEWBIE is a useful channel that should not be turned off unless you really intend and wish to. It is your primary source of help as a newbie, and you will receive tips both from players and from newbie Guides (whose names are Romeo and Juliet).

To speak on any channel, you may simply type the name of the channel, followed by what you wish to say. For example, to speak on the NEWBIE channel, you can type NEWBIE, followed by what you wish to say. 

Sometimes you might receive a TELL from someone, which is a private whisper someone sends directly to you while they and you are both in the game. The tell may sound like this, for example:

Juliet tells you, "Hello."

If someone sends you a tell and you would like to respond, simply type REPLY, then type the message you would like to send to the person. You can also initiate a tell to someone by typing TELL, and then the character's name, and then the message you would like to say to the person. If you cannot get the spelling of the character's name from initial pronunciation (as a lot of people do have strange names), you may wish to have your screenreader spell out the name for you so you can reach the correct person. This is also a good strategy for items, rooms, or non-player characters with strange names you wish to interact with throughout the game.

Sometimes players may try to send you a tell with extra punctuation indicating they are trying to talk to you on an out-of-character basis rather than an in-character basis. This is usually indicated by them surrounding their words with double parentheses, or by prefacing their words with double forward slashes, or by prefacing their words with "OOC:". If you are able to configure your screenreader or your MUD client to read those particular conformations of punctuation and give you the indication that it is out-of-character information, please do so! Examples are:

Juliet tells you, "(( Hello. ))"
Juliet tells you, "// Hello."
Juliet tells you, "OOC: Hello."

If you did not hear your screen reader read the double parentheses in the first line above, or the double slashes in the second line above, then consider reconfiguring your screen reader settings until you are able to do so.

It is also highly recommended that you type J O I N V I P, or JOIN VIP, with a space between the N in join and the V in VIP. This is a dedicated clan for visually impaired players; you can ask for assistance there as well. You will need to type CLAN SWITCH VIP, then type CLT followed by your message or question. 


Section 3: MUD Clients

If you are using the native Nexus MUD client in your web browser to play Achaea, our players with screenreaders would strongly suggest that you instead use a MUD client program that works with screenreaders. Those clients include: VIPMUD, GMUD, and MUSHCLIENT. This is certainly not an exhaustive list.

If you are familiar with common MUD functions such as gagging lines, using triggers, substitutes, and aliases, all of these and more that you add to your MUD client system may help you manage the flow of information from Achaea for you more easily. Furthermore, sound triggers, where a particular line of text triggers a particular sound, can be extremely useful to help you quickly understand what is going on in the game. So building a big library of .wav files for your client system can be helpful.

Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this help file to teach you the specifics of how to work with MUD clients or add aliases, gags, triggers, and sound triggers. But these are things you can potentially ask other players to help you with via the NEWBIE channel.


Section 4: Questing

As a new player, you will be encouraged by the game to start questing and completing your TASKS in Minia, Lodi and other newbie areas. HELP WHATNOW is a good place to start, as well as checking your TASKS often to see what is new. HELP TASKS is a brief help file that may be easier to understand.



Section 5: Conclusion

Achaean players, or adventurers, are very helpful, and so again, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask via the NEWBIE channel. It may be helpful to mention that you are using a screen reader if you are willing to disclose that information. If too many people are talking to you at once and you are feeling overwhelmed, you may wish to mention that, or ask people to answer you via tells in a more private way for any questions you may have.

We truly hope that you enjoy the wonderful world of Achaea! We would like to make this text adventure as accessible as possible for players who use screen readers. Please feel free to submit any ideas you may have to help us do this better by typing IDEA, followed by the text of your idea.