Hello
First of all, what can be really anoying for blind mudders is the existence of the prompts, because it tells you your health, mana, etc after an entered command or new text. There are two alternatives which could be used to avoid it:
1. Either have a display command, which people could use in their aliasses to get their health, etc while their prompt is off. Something like: display $h/$H. That, if you have 100 hp out of 200 would say: 100/200.
2. Some advanced mud clients can ignore the prompt completely and put the various numbers into variables which, using an alias or macro can be spoken. In this case, guides for various clients would be nice. The best would be if users of the various clients could write a howto guide so others could follow their instructions and have a working system.

The map
While for me memorising huge areas was never a problem, it can be handy to have a command which could tell you exact directions to an important location.
If the command doesn't fit with the roleplay, it can be modified e.g. to milestones.
There's also an alternative here, people can use their clients to make various aliasses for directions, but the best would be the command-based approach.

Mobs health
Many muds does not have a separate command to check a mob's health. The only way to check in this case is by looking at the mob. In combat this could be critical, since everything depends on how quickly you react.

The ability to turn off colors
While most clients can handle colors nicely, there are exceptions when the ansi escape strings for colors can be disturbing. Listening to things like you see a 0[33mdragon0[33m here.

Generaly, provide a pure text mode for every ascii thing, including maps, various games, devices, etc, as well as have options to reduce incoming messages. For instance when someone picks up an item, casts a spell, etc etc. While it can ruin the detailed coding of the game, it can be handy in situations when you wouldn't care about how detailed the game is, like in fast-paced combat.

Hope this helps.
Rob


Theresa Ford wrote:

Good evening.

I am an admin on an older, well-established LP mud. Having been pointed to your forum by one of my new friends, I've been monitoring it for a short while and giving thought to how to make our mud, as well as my other code, easy for accessibility. I added vipmud to our list of clients, but as I'm a Mac user, I have not tested it.

For accessibility, what do you find is the most annoying feature of the muds you've tried that you wish you could turn off? What feature do you most find yourself wishing for? I'm looking for general accessibility, not pros and cons of individual mud themes, descriptions, culture, activities.

For example, several years ago, I programmed a working abacus for our mud and was quite happy with it. Yet, looking at it again from the perspective of what would be seen with a screen reader, I realize the string of o's and symbols would not work at all. This is a very specific instance. At thiRe [tbmic] General Accessibili.ems s point, I'm thinking on system-wide mudlib things that might be useful, prompts, navigation directions, etc.

If you want to take a run around our medieval mud and offer specific suggestions, it's Ancient Anguish, anguish.org port 2222. I would like to point out, however, that programming changes, especially to our mudlib take time due to the very intense quality control procedures.

– T (Jerusulum at