Will there be methods for piloting starships blind?

Amine · October 2017

I noticed in the initial post outlining starships that space will be represented by a 2d grid of ASCII characters. This seems like an elegant solution to a tricky problem. However, as a blind person I am curious how accessible this system will be out of the box. Will there be methods of efficiently navigating and carrying out other ship functions through text alone? Will this have to be set up client-side? I know release is a ways away, but any information you could give on plans in the works for blind access would be really helpful.

Getting more excited by the day!

Tecton · October 2017

We're definitely trying our best to make the systems as accessible as possible to VI players, but as with anything that requires a lot of spatial/visual awareness, piloting a ship is definitely a tough nut to crack (without introducing a lot of other issues). Know that it's always in our minds, and we'll do our best to try to accommodate players who use screenreaders or otherwise have issues with the visual aspects of the game.

Satomi · October 2017

Also, provide as much feedback as you can. I know one of the guys in Aetolia is always willing to tweak things to make it easier on screenreader users, and I'm confident that Starmourn will be just as helpful!

Suldar · November 2017

There's a fairly successful ship captain in Achaea by the name of Kaiu that is a blind player, and it sounds like the starship system will be similar to that. May be worth seeing if you can reach out to her for some tips.