Accessibility Statement

The Auldmere Chronicles is a product of Novara Consulting Group, LLC, whose other work is in accessible technology. We would be poor stewards of that if our own game were not usable, so this statement is written to be checked rather than admired: every feature described below is one you can go and use.

It covers three things: this website, the game (both our apps and playing by terminal), and our books and digital publications.

Why a MUD starts ahead

Auldmere is made of text. There is no rendered 3D scene to describe, no visual timing to react to, and nothing that must be seen to be understood: the world arrives as prose and you answer with words. That makes this genre one of the most accessible in games for blind and low-vision players, and it has been that way since long before anyone called it accessibility.

We treat that as a property worth protecting rather than an accident. When we add something visual, such as a map, a chart or a card, the rule is that it must be an alternative to the words, never a replacement for them.

Playing by terminal

If you already have a screen reader and a terminal client you trust, the game works with them, and these in-game settings are there to help (type prefs to see them all):

• Colour off. Colour codes can be turned off entirely, so nothing arrives as escape sequences your reader has to wade through.
• High-contrast palette, for readers and terminals that pass colour through.
• Brief mode. Short room descriptions once you know a place, so re-entering a familiar room is one line rather than a paragraph.
• Spacing control. A blank line, a divider rule, or nothing , whichever your reader handles best.
• Map off. The wilderness map is an ASCII grid; it can be turned off, and directions are always available as words.
• Ambient quiet. Weather, sky, town life and distant sightings can each be muted separately, so the channel you care about is not buried in scenery.

Terminal clients themselves are made by other people; their accessibility is theirs, not ours. We do our part by keeping the output plain and the settings above under your control.

The iPad and Apple Watch apps

The apps are built with SwiftUI's standard controls, so they inherit the system's accessibility behaviour rather than reimplementing it. Specifically:

• Text scales with your system text-size setting; almost everything uses semantic text styles rather than fixed sizes.
• High Contrast theme, which darkens the app's own greys as well as the game's colours, because a half-contrasted interface is not a contrasted one.
• Large alerts. A setting that turns every alert into a full-width banner rather than a small one. This exists specifically for players with limited vision, and it was asked for before it was built.
• Playing without a keyboard. Exits, macros and recent commands are all available as buttons with large touch targets, so a session can be played by tapping. This matters for motor accessibility as much as convenience.
• Playing without touch. A hardware keyboard drives everything: panes, history, and your own macros bound to keys.
• VoiceOver labels on controls whose meaning is not already in their text. The vitals bars announce "HP 12 of 40" rather than reading a shape, and exits announce where they go.
• Transcripts. Each session can be saved and read back at your own pace, which helps if you use a screen reader, if reading in real time is tiring, or if you simply want to check what someone said.

Books and digital publications

Our books are produced as reflowable text, not as pictures of pages: text can be resized, re-flowed, read aloud, and rendered to a refreshable Braille display. We structure them with real headings and a navigable table of contents, and we provide text alternatives for meaningful images.

The reader honours your system's reduce motion setting: progress animations stop and jumping to a saved place happens instantly rather than scrolling. We are working to the accessibility requirements that now apply to ebooks sold in the European Union, and we publish accessibility metadata with each title so you can see what a book supports before you buy it. If a title you own is not usable with your reading tools, tell us. That is a defect and we want to fix it.

This website

The site carries an accessibility toolbar on every page: light and dark modes, a high-contrast theme, adjustable text size, a dyslexia-friendly font, underlined links, and adjustable spacing. Underneath, the site uses semantic HTML with ARIA where appropriate, supports full keyboard navigation, keeps focus indicators visible, and provides text alternatives for meaningful images.

This statement and the other legal statements can be read in a number of languages using the selector at the top of each. English is the authoritative version; translations are offered for convenience.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define how to make digital content more accessible. This website aims to conform to WCAG 2.2 Level AA and to align with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

The apps are partially conformant with WCAG 2.2 Level AA: most of the standard is met, and the gaps we know about are listed below rather than left for you to discover. We follow Apple's accessibility guidance for iOS and watchOS.

Two things worth knowing before you play

Nothing in the game depends on colour alone. Channels have their own colours as a convenience, and every one is also named in the line itself, so the text reads correctly with colour turned off.

Combat resolves in real time. Rounds tick on a timer, so fighting has a speed element to it. A great deal of the game does not: exploring, crafting, gathering, trading, the card game and conversation all move at whatever pace you set.

Scope

This statement covers what we make. Terminal clients are written by other people and vary widely in how well they work with assistive technology; if you play by terminal, your client's accessibility is its author's to answer for, and we do our part by keeping the game's output plain and the settings above in your hands.

How we assess this

We use a combination of internal review, automated testing, and manual keyboard and screen-reader checks, and we improve things as we find them and as people tell us about them.

Tell us where it fails

If you hit a barrier, we want to hear about it, including the small ones, and including "this works but it is exhausting." A specific report about one screen is worth more to us than a general complaint, but send the general complaint too.

Email: ryan@novaracg.com

We aim to respond to accessibility feedback within 5 business days. If you need this statement, any page, or anything you have bought from us in a different format, ask and we will provide it.

This statement is reviewed regularly, and is meant to be accurate rather than flattering. If something here describes the game better than the game actually behaves, that is a bug in this page and we would like to know. Get in touch.