Current Fallen London issues with a screen reader

Fallen London
1

Hi everyone and FL admins,
I’ve recently gotten back into this game after some time, and a friend of mine told me a while ago that Story Nexus in general is bad, but I’ve had different results with different games. ApocolypseDreams doesn’t seem to have this issue with stats that I’m about to outline below, for instance.
So, the gist of the issue is that when looking at the stats, the images of what that stats represent are labeled with the image URL from Amazon. For example, here is my current intelligence and Watchful, as if it were read with my current screen reader NVDA. It also happens with Jaws.
//images.fallenlondon.com/icons/owlsmall.png - Observation, intelligence, deduction.
6
//images.fallenlondon.com/icons/eyesmall.png - Aha! What about -
Load content=%2fMe%2fLanding
WATCHFUL 25
Rank

I’m guessing that’s supposed to say &quotAha! What about me&quot? I’m not entirely sure.
That’s the issue with the stats, I wish it was cleaned up a bit.
Another issue I have is the modal dialogues–I guess that’s what they’re called in this case, E.G. posting to your journal, purchasing Fate, reminising about your current ambition, etc. I can’t properly read them like the rest of the game. I’ve been managing to post to my journal because that’s a simple edit box and a post entry, which is okay, all I have to do is tab really. With the others, not so much. If there is content to read, I can’t arrow around and actually get to it. I don’t even know where to begin with the inventory. Equipment has this images problem too, and when I click on it by pressing enter, I can’t figure out how to equip it or show it on the mantelpiece. Obviously what I did was wrong, because I don’t see the changes I thought I had made on my profile.
If equipment provides extra content, unlockables or stat/quality boosts I want to be able to take advantage of it, like everyone else.

Thank you all. I applied for the iOS testing, hoping that FL doesn’t use Unity? If it does, I can pretty much say it’ll be automatically inaccessible.
Later.
edited by Joshua Tubbs on 8/4/2015
edited by Joshua Tubbs on 8/4/2015

2

That’s a shame. It would be better if the alts for those images had the name of what the image represents instead of the image URL. For your examples, if I’m reading it correctly, you should ideally be getting something like:

“Watchful 25 - Observation, intelligence, deduction.”
“6 x Sudden Insight - Aha! What about -”
“”
“WATCHFUL 25”

[That’s actually what it’s supposed to look like, with a terminal dash because the thought trails off there.]

I don’t know anything about screen reader software. There are tooltips which appear when you hover the mouse over each of those images; if there’s a way you can get those to read it might provide another means of getting to the text you’re missing.

I hope FBG can help you figure this out quickly.

3

As far as I’m aware, I’ve got NVDA’s reading tooltips on. It reads that information, I think, but doesn’t remove the excess alt tags which I assume weren’t labeled, so those are the default labels when images are added to the game.
edited by Joshua Tubbs on 8/4/2015

4

I hope FBG can address these accessibility issues!

5

Seconded!

6

feedback@failbettergames.com

7

[color=#0066ff]We’ve received your report via email, thank you! We’ve got the issues in our sights. If anyone else uses a screen reader and wants to sign up for testing Fallen London mobile, we’d be very grateful.[/color]