We don't want to mess up screen readers but I'd love to know what causes a problem versus what doesn't.
Either way, it's a courtesy to less sighted players to not use ASCII in mediums where there isn't a screenreader option.
"This warning will disappear upon installation. This appears to be an example of ASCII art. Sindome is a roleplaying game involving creative descriptions. It is played by blind individuals. ASCII art runs counter to both of these points. Please do not create further ASCII art as we feel it does not represent the sort of creative work we want to encourage within the game itself."
I think the message is pretty clear on it's own.
Should it be in the help file?
People also do ASCII a lot on flyers.
A lot of the recent SICAD ASCII art is amazeballs. Literally the best stuff I have seen in 5+ years of playing here.
At the same time, there is NO WAY that it is screen reader friendly.
To wit, is there some sort of "descriptive text" option for SICADs? I don't know the exact term for it. But I have noticed that IRL, pictures in news stories have captions that describe the content. "Three police officers standing around a tarp covered corpse. With a police car. And evidence markers on the ground." or whatever
I don't use a screen reader. But I think it would be nice if SIC ads had something similar.
"A bonsai tree. With the text, 'Come to the Deji-Pachi for …' "
Just my 0.02c
You'd need a full time staffer just to micromanage if a border or list or divider on every flyer constituted descriptive text or not, let alone the ASCII title text or text illustrations.
This changes a lot of things for flyers, newspapers, books - etc. Clarification is helfpul but it's definitely going to need a discussion.
In that context I don't really see an issue with having flyers that are not totally screen reader compatible because the in-character world of the game is not screen reader compatible. It might be best practices to format them to make sure the largest number of players can parse the information inside of them, but I wouldn't say incoherent information is at odds with the actual functioning of the game as long as it's in-character incoherence and not game mechanics incoherence. Take for example misspelled or misformatted graffiti which might make complete sense to the character creating it but render it incompatible with screen readers.
Considering the player behaviour that is routinely left to slide, my interest in adhering to diktats on how many pipes or hyphens are permissible in text files is exactly zero.
Making game mechanics and gameplay feedback screen reader compatible is one thing (and there is plenty in the game that isn't so it can hardly serve as a model), but prohibiting long standing and completely valid creative uses of in-world tools is a completely regressive way to go about accessibility in my opinion.
(Edited by Slither at 6:07 pm on 12/16/2024)
That said, I think there’s room for a middle ground:
For SICADs and similar areas where descriptive text already exists, encouraging players to use it effectively makes sense and could be emphasized more clearly in help files. For flyers and other "in-world" text-based tools, it might be helpful to provide guidance on how to format them in a way that’s screen-reader friendly without completely removing ASCII art. For example, including a clear description in brackets could be a small but impactful courtesy. Ultimately, this doesn’t have to be about restricting creativity, it’s about being inclusive and creative. Clearer standards or best practices could go a long way without stifling player expression.
