AudioWizards on Steam

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/6238uh/my_steamy_adventures_qui…

Even some parts of this article are slightly outdated already, but it actually makes things simpler. For example, you don't even need to worry about a captcha on the website any more, as they seem to be using the latest version of Google's Recaptcha, where you just tick the I'm not a robot checkbox. The most amazing part of this, however, is how to remotely install Steam games through the website which really seems to be pretty okay with NVDA, without ever having to interact with the totally inaccessible Steam client for Windows itself. And this definitely worked flawlessly for me! This effectively means I won't even be installing the iOS Steam app, which is what many used to recommend to circumvent some of their accessibility issues before. There seems to be no real reason for me to do that.

In fact, I'm absolutely delighted about the game. It's pretty much exactly the same thing as on iOS, but with really simple and intuitive, expectable keyboard controls. The part that blew me away the most about it is the really seamless integration of screen reader support! If they just added the escape key to back out of menus and home and end to quickly jump to the first and last item of a menu respectively, it'd be a very tasty and welcome, but still just icing on the cake.

Lukas

OH wow, cool. Hmm, maybe I might try this for a mini marathon stream in February, or shall I wait until the big one first week in march
This is exciting.

I don't feel the need to buy the game a second time, but it's great they've put it up, and i'll certainly support it with review and wishlist at the least.

why is a game marketed for the blind being distributed on an inaccessible platform? As stated, steam on Mac and windows is not accessible without sighted assistance, though I would love to be corrected on this point.

Steam is accessible on windows, not so on mac. I use steam all the time and with this latest update, gotten a hell of a lot better. Sure, there are some stuff that you may have to work around, but it's gotten better.

Well, the latest Steam client with NVDA on Windows 10 is unfortunately not accessible at all. However, the website is totally fine, and as explained in the Reddit article I linked to just yesterday here, you can basically get around that without actually needing to use the client itself at all, but it will still be able to remotely install Steam games from the browser for you that way. That's what I did with AudioWizards myself. It was my very first ever experience with Steam in my life, I was born totally blind, and I did okay in less than an hour since opening steampowered.com for the first time. Everything is about willingness to try new ways and look for solutions.

I bought the game for iOS the day it came out, and I did the same with the PC version yesterday. Any new enthusiastic developer deserves to be supported. Everyone learns as they go, anyway. If we don't support ambitious developers who are just starting out, we will never get more complex accessible games. Everyone knows Gold Gun was a flop. However, their coverage and trailers for AudioWizards as the game was being developed convinced me to give them another chance, and I never regreted that decision for a single moment.

By the way, I don't believe this is marketed as a game being made exclusively for the blind. It's marketed as an audiogame, which is accessible to the blind but playable by anyone, which is still more or less of a novelty as a concept to most mainstream visual gamers. Most have never tried a game like this before. There are in deed visuals in the game, which can actually be enabled or disabled or even disabled through an unlockable wizarding hat in endless mode, so yeah, it's an audiogame, an accessible game, but not made or marketed as exclusively a blind game.

Lukas

Thanks for the clarification on both the accessibility of steam on windows and the games intended market. I will try booting into windows later post work and getting steam working. There are quite a few games on there I'd like to get on the platform and to use with the xbox controller.

Is there any analogue of the setup as described in the article for Mac? IE, including username and password in the file path or however it's doing that? Would be nice to have this running in my main system rather than having to bounce across to windows which I'm less familiar with.

I have worked out a way of setting up steam independently on Mac including installing new and already owned titles. If anyone would like a guide on this I can do one over the weekend. It's actually pretty simple using the VOCR app, which is an OCR app that works with VoiceOver. It's experimental but is a good way of working on less accessible software.

As far as I know the latest update of steam is accessible in widnows. I don't use sighted assistantce for any game loading etc on steam. Now that I have it working, it's grate. And the html like interface really works well.

Ok, I have done, what was in the description at the reddit Website. But if I want to install the game from the Steam Website, my Pc opened the Steam Client and nothing happens. How do you navigate in this program and what is the review cursor and how I can use them?

Hi folks,
okay, over at the Audiogames.net forum, I was pointed to a much better, more in-depth and more recent guide on using Steam with a screen reader.
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/30133/how-to-use-steam-with-a-screen…
This should explain more things in greater detail and in a clearer way.
For using the NVDA review cursor or Jaws cursor, you should probably consult the respective screen reader's user's guide or some tutorial materials that can be found all over the internet. That's kind of complicated to explain in a single forum post but not too difficult to use in practice.
This guide helped me to clarify several remaining things about using Steam that were still unclear to me.
+Lukas

What is the review mode and how I use this?

See my previous post. Others have explained these things better than I could. Just consult the NVDA user guide or something. But in principle, it's a way of reviewing the contents of the entire screen or window if they are not accessible using standard keyboard navigation. NVDA has several different modes of screen review plus an object navigation feature, so I'm not delving into that, sorry.
Lukas

A polite reminder that if you want information or advice with using Steam on a PC and with Windows screen readers, AppleVis is not the place for this.

Thank you for your understanding and for keeping things on topic.