Accessibility ModandClaude Opus 5
55b19dd537
Pressing a hotbar key ran hotkey.action(state), which for an equipment binding calls an itemActions entry's onActivation directly -- Wield, Drink, Switch on, Pack away. None of those reach console.print or a popup; most only play a sound. So the whole hotbar was silent: no item name, no verb, no confirmation the key had registered at all. patches/hotbar.lua wraps the hotbar VIEW factory, not models/hotkey: models/hotbar.lua captures newHotkey as a file-local at require time, and models/world.lua captures newHotbar the same way, both long before our entry point. views/hotbar.lua is required only by the three states, which load lazily -- the same ordering argument as patches/slider.lua. The verb is computed BEFORE the action runs. The itemAction conditions key off item.isEquipped, which the action itself flips, so asked afterwards they return the opposite verb and a press that wielded would announce "Unwield". Also narrates the empty slot, the silent no-applicable-action branch, binding and unbinding (sound-only in game), and action-type slots. Says nothing when the item is missing from the inventory -- the game prints that itself and patches/console.lua speaks it. 78 testbed checks, 0 failures. The prologue gives the player no items, so the live path is exercised by planting a torch, binding it to slot 1, pressing 1 twice and putting the world back. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Accessibility mod — Sulphur Memories: Alchemist
Blind-accessibility mod adding screen-reader speech, an object tracker, tile exploration and directional wall tones.
Speech goes through Tolk, so it uses your running screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, System Access) and falls back to SAPI 5 if none is running.
Running
"C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe" "D:\code\Sulphur Memories Alchemist 0.4.2 sanctified"
Use lovec.exe instead of love.exe to get a console window — every spoken line
is mirrored there, which is useful for reporting bugs.
The TTS libraries live in accessibility/lib/ and are loaded by absolute path,
so nothing needs installing or copying into Program Files.
If speech does not work, check the console for the startup self-test:
[accessibility] TTS: available
[accessibility] speech channel: yes
speech channel: NO means Tolk loaded but found no screen reader and no SAPI.
Keys added by the mod
All of these are in addition to the game's own controls, and none of them replace a key the game uses.
Reading the message log
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
[ |
Previous message |
] |
Next message |
Shift+[ |
Oldest message |
Shift+] |
Newest message (and resume following new messages) |
\ |
Repeat the current message |
Shift+\ |
Copy the current message to the clipboard |
New messages are spoken automatically. Pressing any key that does something in
the game cancels whatever is still queued, so you are never stuck listening to a
backlog. While you are moving through the history, new messages do not drag
the cursor away — press Shift+] to return to the newest.
Looking around
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
/ |
Scan all eight neighbouring tiles, clockwise from north |
Shift+/ |
Cycle automatic announcements of what comes in and out of view |
; |
Where am I — area name, in-game date and time, coordinates |
Ctrl + numpad 1–9 |
Describe the tile in that direction without moving |
Ctrl + numpad 5 |
Describe the tile you are standing on |
Announcing things as they come into view (Shift+/)
/ tells you what is around you now. Shift+/ decides how much of that
happens by itself as you walk, cycling three settings:
- View announcements when you stop (the default) — changes pile up while you are moving and are read out once you have stood still for a moment. A single step reports as soon as the step lands. A ten-tile walk gives you one combined summary at the end rather than ten reports on top of each other, and it is a net change: something that came into view halfway along and went out again before you stopped is not mentioned.
- View announcements on every step — each step reports its own change. Best when you are creeping along carefully; too talkative for crossing a room.
- View announcements off.
You hear things arriving — In view: a rat, 4 tiles north-east. barrel, 3, nearest 2 tiles east — and creatures leaving: Out of view: a rat. Only
creatures are reported when they leave. Furniture drops out of sight constantly
as walls come between you and it, and being told the bed is out of view every
other step would bury everything useful; a creature you can no longer see is
worth knowing about.
These announcements are queued rather than urgent, so anything you asked for yourself is spoken first, and any key that acts in the game clears them.
Nothing outside your current field of view is ever reported.
Seeing inside containers (the game's own s)
The game's tutorial tells you to press s to see the contents of containers.
For a sighted player that draws the icon of whatever is inside every chest, sack
and pile you can see, straight onto the map. Pressing it now speaks the same
thing, nearest first:
A wooden chest, 2 tiles east, A bunch of ivy leaves, 3, A torch.
A burlap sack, 5 tiles north-west, Coarse salt
or No loot in view when there is nothing to find, so you can tell the key
worked rather than wondering whether it was dropped.
The icons can only show one item per container; you get the whole list. Each
container is also pushed into the message history, so [, ] and \ walk back
through a long list after it has been read out.
This is your own key — whatever you have Highlight loot bound to in the game's
controls, and however you have set "highlight overlays require holding the
key". Clicking the toolbar icon works too. It also works in examine mode and
while aiming. Only containers you can currently see are reported.
The game's own examine mode (x) is also fully spoken: the arrow keys move a
cursor around the map and each tile is described with its distance and direction
from you. Press f in examine mode to jump between exits.
Object tracker
Finds everything you have seen, sorted by distance.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown |
Previous / next category |
PageUp / PageDown |
Previous / next kind of thing in that category |
Shift+PageUp / Shift+PageDown |
Previous / next instance of that kind |
Home |
Distance, direction, and number of steps by path |
Ctrl+Home |
Walk to it |
Categories: Creatures, Items, Alchemy, Interactables, Exits, Terrain features.
So Ctrl+PageDown to reach "Creatures", PageDown to move between rat / beetle
/ guard, and Shift+PageDown to step through the individual rats. Home gives
you the walking distance, which indoors is often very different from the
straight-line distance.
Ctrl+Home does exactly what left-clicking the tile does with a mouse: it queues
a walk along the game's own path. If the thing itself cannot be stood on — a
creature, a chest, a bed — you walk to the nearest tile beside it instead, and
the announcement says "next to" rather than "to". As with a mouse click, the walk
stops early if something interrupts you, and while an enemy is in view the game
only ever commits one step at a time.
Your selection sticks. The list is rebuilt and re-sorted by distance every turn, but the tracker follows the thing you picked rather than the slot it was in, so a rat you are tracking stays selected as it moves around. It is only let go when it genuinely stops being visible.
The tracker only ever reports things you have actually seen.
The journal (j)
The journal has three parts, and all three are spoken:
| Key | Moves |
|---|---|
q / e |
Between tabs — Quests, Lore, Bestiary, Components, Recipes, Tutorials |
| Up / Down | Between entries in the current tab |
| Left / Right | Between pages of the selected entry |
Selecting an entry reads its title, its position in the list, and then the text of the page itself. The tab name is only spoken when you change tabs, and the title only when you change entry, so flipping pages doesn't make you sit through the heading again.
Long entries run to several pages; you are told page 2 of 3 when there is more
than one. The page text also goes into the message history, so [ and ] will
walk back through it and \ re-reads a line — useful for a long lore entry you
want to take in a piece at a time.
The inventory (i)
Moving the cursor reads the item under it, or empty, plus the slot number:
a torch, slot 3. q / e change tab, and the tab name is spoken when it
changes. An item you are currently wearing, wielding or have switched on is read
as equipped.
Pressing enter (or z) on an item opens a small menu of the things you can do
with that item right now — the list is different for every item, and changes
with its state. It is read as, for example:
a torch, actions, Switch on, 1 of 2
Up and Down move through the actions, enter performs the selected one, and any
other key closes the menu without doing anything. After the action runs you hear
the item again, so Switch on is followed by a torch, equipped, slot 3 — that
is your confirmation it worked.
Some items have no actions at all (plain crafting reagents, for instance). For
those, enter does nothing whatsoever in the base game — not even a click — so the
mod says a pinch of sulphur, no actions rather than leaving you wondering
whether the key registered.
Common actions include Activate, Wield, Unwield, Wear, Take off, Switch on, Switch off, Drink, Eat, Apply, Read, Open, and Prepare for throwing / Pack away. Equipping is done from here — there is no separate equipment screen.
Item details (=)
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
= |
Read the full details of the item under the cursor |
Shift+= |
The same, including the item's name |
Reading the cursor only tells you which item you are on. The details tell you what it is: what kind of thing it is, its condition if it can wear out, its description, and — the useful part for alchemy — what it turns into, listed per refinement method:
It is a raw material. Some fresh green leaves from ivy. They contain weak
poison. Yields: x1 when ground in a mortar. x0.2 when distilled.
On the crafting, refining and trading screens the details also read the panel beside the grid, which is where the game keeps the things you most need before committing: a recipe's components and whether you can afford them, what a refinement produces and how much of it you already have, and — in a shop — the price, which appears nowhere else.
You do not have to press = every time. Stop on an item for about half a
second and the details are read to you automatically, which is what the game
does for a sighted player: its own detail popup only appears after you have
hovered a slot for a moment. Arrow through a tab quickly and you hear only the
names, exactly as a sighted player sees only the icons.
Details also go into the message history, so [ and ] walk back through a
long description a piece at a time and \ re-reads a line.
Your character
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
' |
Health and active effects |
, |
Currently selected action |
You are also told automatically when you take damage or are healed.
Wall tones
Each step you take, a tone sounds from the direction of any wall within five tiles, positioned in 3D so you can hear where it is. Further walls are louder.
Reporting problems
Run with lovec.exe and include the console output. Lines beginning [speech]
show exactly what was spoken and when:
[speech]!— interrupted whatever was being said[speech]*— urgent alert, spoken immediately[speech]— queued normally
If something is silent that should not be, that is the most useful thing to report, together with the screen you were on and the key you pressed.
For developers
See accessibility/docs/ — start with docs/README.md, and read
docs/scratch.md first if you are picking the work up mid-stream.