Hi Everyone!
I'm a software developer who for many years has built free apps to explore how I can build the most accessible experiences possible using today's technology, and to share my learnings with other developers to help them consider the accessibility of their own apps.
My latest app is a solitaire game, and while the app is very much a work in progress, it has already received some encouraging feedback from players who are blind. One player has told me that he's been able to complete a game of solitaire for the first time in his life using the app.
Importantly, I've made a number of updates to the app based on suggestions from players, including options for the following:
- VoiceOver can announce moves that are currently available in the game.
- VoiceOver can announce the current state of the game, including optionally having the rank and suit of face-down cards announced.
- VoiceOver can announce the lowest face-up card in a dealt card pile when VoiceOver moves to the top-most card in the pile.
- Extend the width of the top-most card in the dealt card piles all the way across the screen, to allow players to simply move their finger up and down the right edge of the screen to encounter the cards.
Next Steps
While the app has got off to a very exciting start, I'm keen to have more feedback from players to help me learn how I can enhance the game-playing experience further, and to help me understand where I should be focusing my efforts.
The app itself is freely available at the Apple App Store, Accessible Solitaire. If anyone has any thoughts on how I can make the game more usable and more enjoyable, I'd really value your advice, and I'll add your ideas to the list of things I need to concentrate on.
And any suggestions you might have would ultimately help other developers learn too, as I'll be discussing and demonstrating the app again with developers next month. For anyone interested in some of the more technical aspects of the app, I've shared some thoughts on its development at Guy Barker's Articles.
I'd be happy to provide more details on the app if that would help.
Thanks!
Guy
Comments
A couple suggestions.
First, really fun game, I never did manage to find an accessible solitaire on iOS, so really nice to have.
First, maybe there's another way to do this, any way to expand and collapse piles with lots of face cards? You can tap different areas of the screen to jump a bit. But say I have a king through two in pile 3. Usually I swipe through cards, so you have to go through all of those cards to get to the next pile or lowest card, e.g. if you have king through five and want to add a four. I don't have the hints options/buttons on, so maybe that would help here somehow?
Next, we can change the celebration sound, (I really want to win to find out what that whatever century spinning mule thing is all about!), but could we change the others? Particularly, the sound that happens when you successfully move a card is pretty high-pitched and lowers Voiceover audio for a second, so sometimes, it's hard to catch messages, e.g. the revealed card.
Finally, I know you said this hasn't been tested with a keyboard yet, but I saw it was enabled, but not verified, for Mac. It almost works, you need an M series of course, except for a few things. You can use standard Voiceover navigation to move through things and examine the cards and even select and move them.
However, there seems to be no way to close and save the settings, the close button toggles the celebration sound. Also, though you can select cards, none of the buttons for the piles or the next card seem to work. So if I have an eight after hitting "next card", this does work, and I try hitting VO-space on the button to select it to move it on to a nine in the card piles, it doesn't let me select the card.
Similarly, if I have an ace in the piles, I can select it, but when I move to the clubs target pile, and again try to activate the button to put it there, nothing happens. I haven't tried playing with a Bluetooth keyboard on iOS yet, but I'd expect similar results.
To be fair this might be a low priority, since you need an M series Mac to play it and I'm guessing most people on a phone won't try using a BT keyboard. But I mention it because there aren't a lot of games for the Mac. So if you have the right kind, it's nice to be able torun iOS games on it.
Thanks for a great game.
Hi Khomus, thanks for the feedback!
Thanks so much for all this feedback, this is just the sort of thing I was hoping for! I'll add all you've said to the list of things I need to investigate.
Here are a few quick thoughts on your suggestions...
I've not had the suggestion before of making the face-up cards in a dealt card pile collapsible, so that's given me something new to consider. Based on the scenario you describe, relating to fast navigation, there is one setting that might be of interest. Please forgive me if I misunderstood the scenario, and what I'm mentioning here isn't relevant. The setting's called: "Extend hit target", and only has an effect when the device is in portrait orientation. When this setting is on, the top-most card in each dealt card pile extends from its usual place at the end of the dealt card pile, all the way across the screen to the right side of the screen. So in the case where there's a king through five in a pile, the five is much wider than the other cards in the pile. So once you've selected the four, you move your finger down the right edge of the screen until you encounter the five. This avoids the need to move your finger across the screen as well as up and down before encountering the five. I'm not sure if that helps with your scenario.
I can definitely increase the lists of celebration sounds. I added a new fanfare sound recently, so you only have to have the 18th century spinning mule if you really want to hear it! I found that spinning mule sound interesting, as I happened to visit an old mill a couple of months ago where they had one of those old machines still operating, but I get how it's not really everyone's favourite sound. I should be able to add a lot of new sounds, I just need to make sure I include the licencing information to acknowledge where I got the sound from.
And I can look into replacing the other incidental sounds too. The current sounds were ones I created at the kitchen table, hitting things that were lying around, so hardly professional. I really don't want the sounds to impact the VoiceOver announcements, so that's something I need to work on.
Thanks also for the details on the keyboard use. So far I've only worked on the keyboard use on a Windows device, and as far as I know that was working ok. With the keyboard, I could add more keyboard shortcuts for specific things, such as the screen reader announcing the status of specific areas of the game, without having to announce the state of the entire game. Unfortunately, something's broken with the software I use to build the app on Windows at the moment, and I can't release any updates to the Windows version. Hopefully that'll be fixed before too long. But I can start exploring the possibility of using a keyboard on the Mac. I must confess I'm not actually a Mac user, and the only reason I have a Mac is because it's a requirement for building iOS apps. (I don't even have an Apple keyboard.) But hopefully I can begin to learn a little more about it all and get a feel for what it would take to get the Accessible Solitaire app working with a keyboard on the Mac.
Thanks again for all your suggestions, I really appreciate it!
Hi Khomus, thanks for the feedback!
Thanks so much for all this feedback, this is just the sort of thing I was hoping for! I'll add all you've said to the list of things I need to investigate.
Here are a few quick thoughts on your suggestions...
I've not had the suggestion before of making the face-up cards in a dealt card pile collapsible, so that's given me something new to consider. Based on the scenario you describe, relating to fast navigation, there is one setting that might be of interest. Please forgive me if I misunderstood the scenario, and what I'm mentioning here isn't relevant. The setting's called: "Extend hit target", and only has an effect when the device is in portrait orientation. When this setting is on, the top-most card in each dealt card pile extends from its usual place at the end of the dealt card pile, all the way across the screen to the right side of the screen. So in the case where there's a king through five in a pile, the five is much wider than the other cards in the pile. So once you've selected the four, you move your finger down the right edge of the screen until you encounter the five. This avoids the need to move your finger across the screen as well as up and down before encountering the five. I'm not sure if that helps with your scenario.
I can definitely increase the lists of celebration sounds. I added a new fanfare sound recently, so you only have to have the 18th century spinning mule if you really want to hear it! I found that spinning mule sound interesting, as I happened to visit an old mill a couple of months ago where they had one of those old machines still operating, but I get how it's not really everyone's favourite sound. I should be able to add a lot of new sounds, I just need to make sure I include the licencing information to acknowledge where I got the sound from.
And I can look into replacing the other incidental sounds too. The current sounds where ones I created at the kitchen table, hitting things that were lying around, so hardly professional. I really don't want the sounds to impact the VoiceOver announcements, so that's something I need to work on.
Thanks also for the details on the keyboard use. So far I've only worked on the keyboard use on a Windows device, and as far as I know that was working ok. With the keyboard, I could add more keyboard shortcuts for specific things, such as the screen reader announcing the status of specific areas of the game, without having to announce the state of the entire game. Unfortunately, something's broken with the software I use to build the app on Windows at the moment, and I can't release any updates to the Windows version. Hopefully that'll be fixed before too long. But I can start exploring the possibility of using a keyboard on the Mac. I must confess I'm not actually a Mac user, and the only reason I have a Mac is because it's a requirement for building iOS apps. (I don't even have an Apple keyboard.) But hopefully I can begin to learn a little more about it all and get a feel for what it would take to get the Accessible Solitaire app working with a keyboard on the Mac.
Thanks again for all your suggestions, I really appreciate it!