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Entire forum ➜ MUSHclient ➜ General ➜ Accessibility in MUSHClient and MUSHClient Help

Accessibility in MUSHClient and MUSHClient Help

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Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Fri 14 Sep 2018 03:13 PM (UTC)

Amended on Fri 14 Sep 2018 08:33 PM (UTC) by JJTim

Message

Background:

I am legally deafblind, which means I rely solely on braille output, no voice output from screenreaders. I also installed a NVDA plugin which does some helpful things like keeping the NVDA focus locked on the output window. I searched for the keyword accessibility in the MUSHClient forum, but only found a post from 2009. In that post my problem was already described - it would be handy if the output was navigateable by arrow keys. Also, that incoming input moves cursor to the bottom of the output window isn't ideal. The post didn't match all of my problems, though, nor did the following discussion solve them.

My specific issues:
As the MUD I'm playing is very fast-paced, it'd be ideal if I could navigate output with arrow keys. What I DEFINITELY need is that the focus stays locked on the line I selected, and doesn't jump to bottom of Window. At the same time, I need to be able to type commands (downside of many split window applications - can't type while staying locked on output window).

Did someone develop a plugin like that? Didn't find a matching one in the plugin list. Tried smoother scrolling and v!ry smooth scrolling, but these settings didn't seem to fix it.

Also I noticed that the help files aren't readable under NVDA. I can read it with Jaws, but sadly not with NVDA. Maybe my fault, because I'm not that familiar with all NVDA hotkeys. Does anyone know whether there's a way in NVDA?

Thanks in advance.

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #1 on Sat 15 Sep 2018 06:43 AM (UTC)

Message

I can’t answer that in detail just now, because I’m on holidays and do not have access to a PC.

The auto scrolling upon arrival of new output is, I think, a configurable option. Try pressing control+space.

That is a toggle, which is supposed to stop the automatic scrolling. That should make it possible for you to type commands in the command window, whilst reviewing the output in the output window at the same time.

The output should be navigable by the arrow keys, from memory again I think it is control+up and control+down arrow.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #2 on Sat 15 Sep 2018 06:47 AM (UTC)

Message

I am not familiar with NVDA however there is an existing plug-in that will let you access the help files from within the output window. It lets you type in “mchelp” followed by the word you want help on and the resulting part of the help file then appears in the output window where it can be read to you by a screen reader.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #3 on Sat 15 Sep 2018 10:46 AM (UTC)

Message

The "pause output" option (ctrl+space) freezes the screen, I think? So, the current screen content stays fixed. As soon as I type a new command, this state gets broken, though. I'd probably need a permanent version of this state.

Re control up/down, that visually scrolls through the output, doesn't move NVDA or Jaws focus, though. I suspect I'd have to talk to the developers of the screenreaders, though, unless there's a client side function to move screenreader focus?

Re helpfiles: thnks, that works. It'd be nice if I just could scroll through output without screen/window limitations, but ultimately I can do so with pageup/pagedown without problem, so that's OK.

Most important would be a permanent form of "pause output".

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #4 on Sat 15 Sep 2018 05:55 PM (UTC)

Message

Regarding your first point , I thought there was an option to stop new output automatically causing the screen to scroll. Can’t confirm this just now, however..

As for scrolling the screen, your point about moving where Jaws will read out assumes that there is a focus which can be moved.

MUSHclient does not have a focus (line) in the output window, the closest you get to that is if you select text, and then that becomes the selected text..

Can you clarify what you are really trying to achieve here? Do you want to have certain lines from the output window re-spoken to you? Are you trying to slow down the delivery rate? Or skip certain blocks of text?

One possible thing you could do would be to log all of the output to a text file, and then use a suitable program to read from that, instead.

Another possible thing you could do, assuming you’re trying to review earlier text, would be to make a plug-in that, using some sort of command, speaks X number of lines back from the current output position.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #5 on Sat 15 Sep 2018 08:11 PM (UTC)

Amended on Sat 15 Sep 2018 08:29 PM (UTC) by JJTim

Message

As noted in the background section I'm legally deafblind so using screenreaders (and MUSHclient) much differently than most blind people do.
To be clear, I don't need speech at all (haven't even installed that plugin), but I'm using a braille display and the auto-scroll function when new text arrives messes with my ability to perceive text.
I'll keep looking for that option, perhaps I overlooked it so far. Another person told me it's there, just couldn't tell me where. So that'd definitely do.
My other problem is that the numbers of lines displayed per screen is rather low - so I need to press page up/page down a lot if a lot scroll is coming in. Is it possible to resize the output window so it contains more lines? I wouldn't want to trade the output window for something like a log file, because I can't type commands while reading the log file.
I'm sorry if all this is explained clumsily, I'm rather new to sharing my problems. Usually I just try to patch them up somehow, but seeing as how MUSHclient has so many inbuilt and plugin functions...
EDIT: Found a "disable pause on send" checkbox and unchecked. Pause still gets removed when I scroll with ctrl+down/up arrow/page up/down, though.

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #6 on Sun 16 Sep 2018 04:59 AM (UTC)

Message

Yes, when I said “speaks X lines” I should have said “conveys X lines”.

You can certainly resize the output window, you hold as many lines as will fit into the current size of the screen, and you can make font smaller, to fit in more lines. I’m not sure how this will apply in your case.

How does the Braille display even interact with the output window?Effectively the window is just a graphic, although most the time the graphic is in the form of letters of the alphabet. Thinking about it, I am now guessing the braille reader recognises text on the screen rather than interacting with the underlying textual representation in the computer.

The screen reader plugin works by hooking into the code which simply sends into the plugin the stream of incoming text. This is unaffected by whether or not you scroll forwards or backwards or pause the display.

I’m pretty confident the autoscrolling can be disabled, if that is the easiest solution, however as I said I do not have access to my computer just now.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #7 on Sun 16 Sep 2018 06:24 AM (UTC)

Amended on Sun 16 Sep 2018 06:25 AM (UTC) by JJTim

Message

Okay, brief introduction on how screenreaders work.

A screenreader works by focusing a single object on the screen (this can be a textfield, a hyperlink, a button, even an image or a menu item) and speaking its attributes, if possible.
Attributes can be descriptions, tool tip texts, name, associated labels and the like. (So in the case of an image I might see butterfly.png, but not what exactly the image displays unless a text-based description was set).
This focusing can be done in 2 main ways: System focus/system caret - focuses on current object the edit cursor is on, or the system is focused at (that's the usual focus, and applies when I'm editing things in MUSHclient's menu, or input.
The second is more unusual and is the Jaws or NVDA focus. This one is *independent* from system focus and can be moved all over the screen (sometimes it can get tethered to the mouse, if people want to).
What we access by arrow key up/down is the system focus, so that doesn't affect the screenreader focus, but I can move that focus with keys on my braille display.
I guess this isn't important for the current problem, but hope it's interesting nonetheless.
And I'll keep searching for the setting :-)

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #8 on Tue 18 Sep 2018 05:53 AM (UTC)

Message

I will be able to help you more in a few weeks.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

Fiendish USA (2,541 posts) Bio Global Moderator

Date

Reply #9 on Tue 18 Sep 2018 06:20 PM (UTC)

Message

JJTim, your explanation of how screenreaders works only explains how you interact with it, but doesn't explain how it actually knows what the text in the output window.

Can you describe the functioning of your braille display a little bit in the context of how it works with MUSHclient currently? Does it show one line of output at a time? Does it show an entire page?

https://github.com/fiendish/aardwolfclientpackage

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #10 on Tue 18 Sep 2018 06:45 PM (UTC)

Message

Braille displays are devices which you can connect to your computer with USB/Bluetooth.
They display one line of the screenreader-focused object (if there is more than one line) in braille. (Each letter as dot combination).
A standard braille display only contains 40 characters, and only one line. There are 80 character displays, but they're twice as long as a normal screen.
Imagine someone put a hood over your screen so only one line remained visible. You could scroll manually, but add an auto-scroll function to this mix and a lot of scroll...

Posted by

Fiendish USA (2,541 posts) Bio Global Moderator

Date

Reply #11 on Tue 18 Sep 2018 11:53 PM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 18 Sep 2018 11:55 PM (UTC) by Fiendish

Message

First things first...
My experience is that "Auto Pause" checked and "Un-Pause on send" not checked does what you want. You say that pause still gets removed when you scroll with ctrl+down/up arrow/page up/down, but my experience is that it only gets removed when you're at the very bottom. Are you saying that you want a way to not unpause even when the text is scrolled all the way down to the end? This should be relatively simple to do as long as you know that it will then necessarily require you to manually unpause always. Perhaps that's what you want, though?

Since you're here and letting us pick your brain about screen readers...
Ok, so what I don't understand yet is how it decides what line to display. MUSHclient gets some messages from the server and then displays them on the screen. Then what? The reason that text-to-speech players use special plugins to play is because MUSHclient doesn't directly interface with any screen readers and so we make plugins that send new lines to the speech engines. I've made one for Aardwolf that uses the Tolk library on the back-end which claims to handle both speech and braille output systems. But if you're not using a plugin, then why do other people need these plugins? And the scenario where anything in the scrollback buffer might also be read is something that I still don't yet understand, especially for players who do use such plugins that send incoming lines to their preferred output engine.

https://github.com/fiendish/aardwolfclientpackage

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #12 on Wed 19 Sep 2018 07:32 AM (UTC)

Message

Heh, ah, that's why... I probably was at end of output file and pressed page down/ctrl+down. Which unpaused.
Hm, to be honest ideally I'd have more lines per page (I tried to do that with smaller font and the like, but it somehow didn't really work...) and disable the auto-scroll function - whether I manually unpause whenever I'm at end of output file, or manually pause is, ultimately, the same. Just will have to get used to pressing ctrl+space whenever it gets unpaused.
My MUD is pretty fast-paced, so not sure whether it'll work like this. we'll have to see.
*ponders* I'm not a screenreader developer. But I guess the way it works is that screenreader focus, once separated from sysstem or caret focus, moves to a certain line on the screen and stays on that line, sending my braille display the content of that line. That'd also explain why auto-scrolling is so annoying for me - because I don't focus a specific line, but a screen position and whichever line is currently at this position, you get what I mean?
Voice engines work very differently, though. They don't have a screenreader focus. They only read what's on system/caret focus or alternatively lines sent to the engine.

Posted by

Nick Gammon Australia (23,165 posts) Bio Forum Administrator

Date

Reply #13 on Wed 19 Sep 2018 05:32 PM (UTC)

Message

It’s still not totally clear to me the exact nature of your problem. Is your primary intention just to read the text from the MUD as it arrives? Or is it to go back and review earlier lines and then return to where you were before you started doing the review?

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com

Posted by

JJTim Germany (21 posts) Bio

Date

Reply #14 on Wed 19 Sep 2018 06:52 PM (UTC)

Message

It's... hard to explain when you can't see it for yourself...
So remember how I told you that I'm focusing a position on the screen? Well, that means if five new lines of text arrive, I don't stay focused on the line I just wanted to read, but on a five lines newer line.
Ehm, assume I read line 3 on the current screen (counting from bottom up). 5 new lines arrive - and I still am focused on the NOW 3rd line from the bottom up. But the line I wanted to read is now the 8th line on the screen, so I need to scroll up. In a fast-paced mud, however, lines quickly s croll off my screen and I need to use pageback to read them and when I have read them all... I'm dead.
Ideal would be if I could focus specific lines, like in text documents.
A solution has already been suggested: Add all output lines to a notepad document of MUSHclient's internal notepad. Problem here is that if I type, I don't type to the input window anymore.
Unless... the all typing goes to command window does this?
In that case I might need a function to add all stuff to a notepad and I'd be good. (and feel rather foolish for bugging y'all)

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