Tomorrow I'm going to be speaking to a small group of #blind students at a local high school. Apparently the teacher wants me to help motivate them to learn more about assistive technology, which they've fallen behind on; she specifically mentioned JAWS, but I've asked if I can talk about NVDA as well. It might help to have some ideas for fun things to do on a PC, things a high-schooler would enjoy, that require some mastery of a screen reader.
Follow-up question for #blind people who play text-based interactive fiction (a.k.a. text adventures): Which IF interpreters work best with Windows screen readers, particularly JAWS? Lectrote (https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote) wasn't bad the last time I tried it with NVDA, though you have to be a somewhat advanced user to find the right download (on the GItHub releases page) and unzip it. Wondering if there are better options.
It seems to me that interactive fiction / text adventure games reward mastery of a screen reader more than, say, audio games developed specifically for blind people, or the mainstream games I've seen that have added accessibility via their own TTS and other audio. And for those lucky enough to have a Braille display, they can use that as well when playing IF.
@matt I mis IF games. The first ones i played were bundled with the Braille Note MPower. I wish I could still play these games today. I've often thought that in some ways IF's are just muds without the networking.
@spaciath Which ones came with the BrailleNote MPower? What were your favorites?
@matt A dark room and gourmet, and the dream hold.
@spaciath And yes, IF and MUDs have very similar interfaces. But I think a well-made single-player IF game is still worthwhile.
@spaciath [dragonscave.space] @matt [toot.cafe] Why not try the Interactive Fiction Archive? They have all sorts of games there.