Minecraft inventory on PC

We get the oft-repeated claim, almos gospel at this point, that MineCraft can't be made fully accessible. How are you managing to play? Also, maybe put this same question to the audiogames.net forum. You might get better answers.

I posted a YouTube video about this, a year or two ago if I am not mistaken. Requires some accessibility mods, but there's a video of a blind guy playing it, and it was quite accessible. Though there was a bit of a learning curve.
Anyway, here is that YouTube link. Enjoy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=efE4KofiWXM&t=670s&pp=ygUbQWNjZXNzaWJsZSBNaW5lY3JhZnQgZm9yIFBD

I should try this again, it's been a while and i think i've come a long way from when i last tried, both gaming and tech, skill wise.

I receive TSE newsletters every now and again, because I used to have a Seeing Eye Dog from that particular school. I received one the other day, and there was an article about this young boy, about age 10 I think, who likes to play Minecraft on his iPad.
Now as I understand things, this kid was either born blind, or blind since infancy. My question is, has anyone played an accessible Minecraft game either on iOS or iPad iOS? Because I am really, really interested to hear more about this.

Hi,
Since we're on the topic of Minecraft, if anybody knows of a one-stop shop where I can download all the mods for a particular version of minecraft so I can make it accessible, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe a .zip file somewhere or something? I tried downloading all the mods I would need, but making sure I got the exact version of each mod for the corresponding minecraft version just was such a hassle. I managed to install some of the mods and start playing a bit, but after the first couple of minutes I just got stuck because I think a couple of the sound mods or something were missing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTRG3S0xeeg

Never say I did nothing for you. 😛

Hi Brian,
Will check that out.

I've not played it but it's similar to the stardue access mod from what I understand: https://github.com/minecraft-access/minecraft-access?tab=readme-ov-file

Yep. That video I posted above is about Minecraft Access, and a few other choice accessibility mods. 😉
Supposed to have links to all of the mods as well.

If I understand correctly, there should be a way to get Stardew Access, and its mods, installed on Mac. I managed to get somewhere with Steam, but it was along and tedious process that I wouldn't inflict on anyone I really cared about. Is Minecraft and its mods also available for Mac?

However that does not mean they do not exist, I just have not heard anything about Mac Minecraft Access mods.

This is on windows, I'm not sure about mac.

So I found this site that has information on the different versions of Minecraft, and their accessibility.
Funny story; I do not play Minecraft. Probably never will. Just not my cup of tea.
However, my HP laptop actually came with a promotion for Minecraft Education, which is apparently accessible.
Go figure ...

Here is the website I mentioned above:
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/accessibility

The Minecraft Access mod makes Minecraft completely playable for the blind. Certain tasks are definitely more difficult, and there are things that could be added to the mod to make it better, but totally blind people, including me, can play and enjoy Minecraft with it, and there are even a few blind YouTubers who do some pretty advanced things with no eyesight. It helps a lot to have good mental mapping skills, and it can take a lot of practice to get good at it.

Also, for help setting up and using the mod, you can join the official Discord server. People on there are very helpful, and they even started a Minecraft server for blind players recently. There is also good documentation on the mod's website.

Regarding Minecraft Access on the Mac, it used to work only on Windows and Linux, but I added MacOS support a few months ago and contributed it to the project. I'm also working on another mod to add some features not in Minecraft Access, including announcing nearby points of interest like trees and villages, adding user-created landmarks, and starting audio beacons on POIs similar to Soundscape.

Minecraft is pretty much completely inaccessible to the totally blind on iOS, because the iOS version of Minecraft is Minecraft Bedrock, which does not support mods like Minecraft Java does. You can write scripts for Minecraft Bedrock and load them in behavior packs, but this is very limited compared to what you can do with Minecraft Java mods, and I don't think anyone has tried to create an accessibility mod for Bedrock.

Thanks for this. I think I might try the discord server if I get stuck. I haven't messed around with this recently, but I will when I find the motivation.

I think it's really amazing what has been done to make this game accessible to the blind. I wish I was into crafting games, I really do. Unfortunately, it's just not within my wheelhouse.
For those of you that enjoy these kind of games, I hope you all have a wonderful gaming experience. 😃🎮

I used to play MineCraft all the time with my wife on the PS3 in the days when I could see what I was doing. I just can't get my head around how this could possibly work without visuals. I get that technically if it's telling you coordinates or what blocks you are looking at or whatever, but it's more about the spatial awareness. If I am building a house, for example, I just can't imagine how you could know that all the walls and ceiling are covered by blocks, that there is a door or window. Or then particularly appreciate it once it has been built.

Do you have to be elite level blind to get anything out of it?

I am tempted to give it a try on the Mac but I am guessing you would need to invest a lot of time into it to be anywhere near competent.

Sorry if this comes across as negative - I'd love to be able to play this sort of thing again, and my wife definitely misses the days of us playing MineCraft a lot. Just so far, it does not quite compute!

I say take Nike's approach, and just do it! Especially if you have a sided person playing along with you, I imagine you would pick it up fairly quickly.

What you have to do when building is keep a map in your head and keep track of your coordinates. For example, let's say you want to build a house, and you're at y level 64 (y is the vertical corrdinate). First you would want to prepare a flat area, so you could start at the lower left corner of where you want to build, move right one by one, checking your coordinates every time. If you go up, then you break the block below you, and if you go down, you place a block. Then go back to the left, go forward one space, and repeat, and keep doing this until you have flattened the whole space. After that, to build a wall, go back to the bottom left corner, look straight down, and jump while placing a block. Jump and place two more times, or however high you want your wall to be. Then move right one until you fall, and jump and place again, keeping track of your coordinates so you know if you mess up. And so on for the other walls.

Keeping track of your coordinates is also important when mining. Honestly I'm not very good at building yet myself, but I've gotten pretty good at mining and exploring. If you write down where things are, like your base, or tunnels you've mined, or interesting things on the surface like villages, that will help a lot too. It can be laborious sometimes but if you concentrate on what you're doing and practice, I've found it very doable. There's actually a YouTube video that demonstrates some techniques for building, and other tutorial videos on the same channel.

I imagine Notepad or something similar would be very helpful here. I have never played any form of Minecraft, but have played a ton of other PC games, both as a sighted and a non-sighted player, and I found Notepad to be incredibly useful for jotting down random notes for myself during a game.

Just a thought. :)

That's pretty amazing that you can do that sort of thing.

I hope this question doesn't come out wrong, but what do you get out of it? If you build something impressive, doesn't it require that you hold the entire thing in your imagination to be able to even know that you've done it? And is exploration really enjoyable with audio only?

Tempted though I am to give it a try, it does feel like a lot of hard work. It does blow my mind that this is even possible though.

When I play Minecraft, I don't really get much out of building for its own sake. I mostly see building a house as a matter of utility, because its a place to store my stuff and stay safe from monsters. I suppose it would be cool to build a replica of something from Lord of the Rings or something like that, but if I did that, it would be more about the accomplishment, and the connection I would feel with Lord of the Rings, than anything else. For exploring, I like encountering things that I've never encountered in the game before, and I suppose I just like the idea of going on quests and adventures, of traveling vast distances, fighting monsters and overcoming other obstacles, and exploring lands far from home. Also, I really like the challenge of the game, like sometimes I will stay out all night to fight monsters, even if I have enough materials already, because if I survive I will feel proud and accomplished in the morning. This is probably the main reason why I do most things in the game actually, except things to make future challenges easier. For example, one time I dug a tunnel from underneath the island where my base was to the main land mass, going through several dangerous areas and dying several times, and the main thing I got out of it was the feeling of accomplishment, as well as the feeling of having had an adventure and visited new and unexplored areas of the world.

The idea of exploring an open world is both intriguing and daunting, when you consider how much more it takes for us to navigate than it does a sighted person. Still open world exploration sound amazing.
As I said before, I just wish I had a yearning to build.