Improving Accessibility

[jacek]

We have an opportunity with Imprudence to improve the accessibility of the Second Life viewer, to make it more usable by all people, regardless of any disabilities they may have. See the companion blog post to this topic for my views on why we should care, and what we can do.

I'd like to catalog as many accessibility issues and potential improvements that we can. I'll start us off:

• Option to disable mouselook mode or require confirmation before switching to it. Alternatively, more accessible ways to exit mouselook.
• Support for custom fonts.
• High-contrast skins (black text on white, white text on black).
• A way to interact with objects without needing to click on them (touch, sit on, buy, etc.).
• Support for screen readers / refreshable braille displays. Giving access to Chat/IM and UI text especially, maybe also things like nearby avatar names and floating text in-world. Also audio notifications of events (e.g. "New message from Jacek Antonelli")

I'm sure there are plenty more ideas of things we could do to improve accessibility! If you or a loved one are disabled and using SL, let us know what would make things easier. Of course, able-bodied people are welcome to participate in the discussion, too! :)

[Seshat]

Thank you, Jacek. Here are my ideas.


* Low contrast skins. (Some people actually have difficulty distinguishing high contrast, and need low.)

* Optional font sizes - either larger or smaller than usual

* Being told when people around you are using Voice.
It's awful to go to a meeting, everything looks silent, and suddenly someone types at you "um, didn't you know we're using Voice?" And you say "no, and I can't, I'm hearing impaired", then everyone feels awful, including you.
Being told they're using Voice won't fix it, but will let me 'speak up' earlier.

* A running Voice-to-text translation would be wonderful, but probably beyond current technology.

* The option to not be so $#*$^# mouse-dependent! Some people have a lot of trouble mousing.

* The option to have a coloured grid. So that instead of white-over-whatever-background, you can have any colour you want.

* The option to have a multicoloured grid. So that instead of length of lines being your grid divider, colour of lines is.

* A 'put this prim right beside that prim' that isn't create-copy. So you can adjust a prim after creation and still get it touching exactly.
(Okay, it's not exactly an accessibility issue, but I know my eyes and mousing arm get tired and sore after a session of construction.)
(Or maybe that's my disability making me tired and sore.)

* A better way to switch between communication and movement mode.

* Clearer depiction of which mode you're in.

[jacek]

* Low contrast skins. (Some people actually have difficulty distinguishing high contrast, and need low.)

Interesting. I never would have thought of that! (A perfect demonstration of the importance of getting input from lots of different people!)

* Being told when people around you are using Voice.

This is something I'd appreciate as well. I can hear fine in RL, but in SL I'm effectively deaf where voice is concerned, for purely technical reasons. (The damned thing won't stay connected long enough for me to follow a conversation, so I just keep it turned off.) I've been in that same, "Oh, we've been in voice for the past 10 minutes," situation.

* The option to have a coloured grid. So that instead of white-over-whatever-background, you can have any colour you want.

* The option to have a multicoloured grid. So that instead of length of lines being your grid divider, colour of lines is.

Interesting ideas, and the first one in particular would be quite simple to implement! The second one might be a little bit harder to do, but still well within the realm of possibility.

* A 'put this prim right beside that prim' that isn't create-copy. So you can adjust a prim after creation and still get it touching exactly.
(Okay, it's not exactly an accessibility issue, but I know my eyes and mousing arm get tired and sore after a session of construction.)

Hey, if a feature will make building easier, faster, and more accessible, all the better! :D I know a lot of builders (myself included) who would absolutely love this. It'll probably be the first "big feature" we attempt, because of the impact it would have on such a broad range of people.

* A better way to switch between communication and movement mode.

* Clearer depiction of which mode you're in.

Just so I understand, do you mean an indicator of whether your keystrokes will go to chat/IM or to movement? In other words, a better indicator of keyboard focus. Is there any particular solution you had in mind? I can think of several ways we might address it:

• More visible / noticeable highlighting of the part of the UI that has keyboard focus. Right now there's an orange border around whatever UI part is selected, but it could be made more noticeable.
• An icon somewhere that switches between two graphics, one for movement mode and one for chat/text entry.
• An icon or graphic that moves to the UI item that has keyboard focus. For movement mode (the 3d view has focus), it could move to one corner of the view.

[jacek]

Another accessibility issue affecting builders. Aimee Trescothick posted this one on Plurk:

• The X (red) and Y (green) building arrows are difficult to tell apart for users with red/green colorblindness. There should be a way to change the color used for each axis.

[Seshat]

* A better way to switch between communication and movement mode.

* Clearer depiction of which mode you're in.

Just so I understand, do you mean an indicator of whether your keystrokes will go to chat/IM or to movement? In other words, a better indicator of keyboard focus. Is there any particular solution you had in mind? I can think of several ways we might address it:

• More visible / noticeable highlighting of the part of the UI that has keyboard focus. Right now there's an orange border around whatever UI part is selected, but it could be made more noticeable.
• An icon somewhere that switches between two graphics, one for movement mode and one for chat/text entry.
• An icon or graphic that moves to the UI item that has keyboard focus. For movement mode (the 3d view has focus), it could move to one corner of the view.

Yes and no. Better indication would be great. A better method of switching would also be great. Right now, if your fingers are on the keyboard, the only method I know of to switch is to keep hitting escape - which can cause you to lose windows you wanted left up (such as the edit window).

[Amaya Summers]

My suggestiosn are pretty basic as I am both visually and hearing impaired.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1927
This would improve life for all second life residents, not just those with low vision.
SL is the only game where I cannot adnust UI settings to suit my needs or th eneeds of others for that matter it seems.

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=190624&highlight=accessibility

This was a really bad day and I was hissed and hit my limit with constantly having to deal with 2 hours of getting SL UI back to where I could actually use it.

Even though there are 2 different skins one can choose from right now there is tones of stuff that are missing, including basics like font settings, contrast, visual and audible cues for some needed things. Voice is not usable by most people so asking a hearing impaired person to try to use it is just nuts.

If you really want to get a good look at some good UI interfaces check out Anarchy Online's client and the Spore client.