Accessibility and Building

[malukus]

Hello everyone,

 

Is there a way for a blind person using a text viewer, such as Radegast, to build objects in Second Life? Of course, the colors and details of the objects would still need to be reviewed by a sighted person, but its actions, such as sounds it would make, teleportations it would cause, notecards it would give, etc, could be programmable. I guess that, with Second Life's official client, since it is not truely accessible for the blind as far as I know, considering it is not talked about in accessibility islands such as Virtual Ability, that would be virtually impossible, so I am looking for alternatives to it... And surely being a builder could help Second Life to have more contents and, possibly, more areas to be visited...

 

Thanks in advance for any response about it,

André Baldo (Malukus).

[Rolig Loon]

That's an intriguing question.  Frankly, I have a hard time knowing how it might work, but then I suffer from the disadvantage of being sighted.  Second Life is a virtual word, entirely digital.  Unlike RL, where a blind artist could feel a 3D sculpture to know where its parts were, an artist in SL only knows what s/he can see on the 2D computer monitor.  With Radegast, you don't even have that to guide you.  I struggle to imagine how you might use sounds or some other cues to let you know what you have created, and I have no idea how you might apply textures.

[malukus]

It could function sort of like a Delphi Object Inspector. Explaining for non-programmers: There is a property of the object called object.height, which, as the name suggests, defines its size from top to bottom, and another one called width. Its graphical interface allows the person to drag and drop the object wherever it must be located, and to redimension it. The dragging and dropping would control the object.top and object.left properties, to define the top-left corner of the object. Then, there could be a script in a text viewer that could define the object by these standards. Since every object is created using prims, the viewer could build these prims individually and later link them to make the object as a whole. Like, first, the leg of a chair, then, its seat, which could be made in small rectangles to make the whole seat, then whatever parts you'd want to put next, like its arms, etc. A script could be created to build an object.material to define the structure of the chair: wood, wicker, etc... So the building operation could work sort of like a painting on a canvas... And its functions could be small ones invoked through sl scripts, typed into the object's core.

 

I don't know if I am dreaming too much, but that would surely make me more addicted to Second Life, since I would feel in relative equality with my sighted friends...

 

Thanks for the quick response!

André.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

I would try to get in touch with the Virtual Ability group, they probably know best about this topic.

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, I can see how that would work, in principle. That does still seem to rely on a graphical interface, though.  How else would you know where the object is and how it relates to other things that you want to attach to it or arrange around it?  Again, I am limited by my experience as a sighted person.

[malukus]

Well, the principal of where the object is could be the same one as where the avatar is. In general, you will build your object in the same place you are located. "Where is the avatar", you ask? Well, Radegast has made a great concept to determine how far an object is from an avatar. When you press the applications (right mouse) key on the name of an object (which sometimes is not that accessible because people forget to give names to them...), you have the options that would work with that object, like touch, wear, etc. However, in the list, the objects come from closest to farthest, as explained in the guide for accessibility itself. And since Radegast has halted its development because, by what I've heard, the main developer is not doing well, someone with good programming skills and a good view of Second Life could try to see how it could work. However, for now, here is the link to the guide, so whoever is interested could check how text viewers show objects to us, and even owr position, which, if we type in the chat box "//status" with no quotes, it shows us our position in coordinates and direction facing!

http://radegast.org/wiki/Accessibility_Guide

 

Good luck!

André.

[Tari Landar]

As far as I know, as of yet, there is nothing that exists to help in regards to building.

When I first started sl, I wasn't yet considered legally blind. I was born with only one functioning eye, though both eyes are/were present. Over time my vision deteriorated but hit a halt in my teenage years for some time. As an adult, the deterioration hit a slow crawl, but in the last year or two has increased a lot. At this point, I am legally blind and will likely be completely blind in the not so far off future. That's dramatically reduced my building capabilities over the years. It's also why when I don't use a TTS program, I end up with typos out the wazoo, and don't bother correcting them, lol. I can type blindly rather well, but it usuallyshows in my posts that I'm typing blindly.

For now, I do what I can with what I've got, and I have assistance with making sure things are aligned and properly textured. Fortunately, for me, despite being legally blind, I do have some eyesight. Although it can take me months on end to finish a project because of obvious limitations. I also had the blessing of having been an overachiever when my vision was better in my earlier sl years, so I have tons of unfinished projects that I can continue to work on. I had had to halt a lot of projects though, and they'll likely never be finished, because even with assistance, the skills I need and dont have are too great.

I really wish someone had a better alternative, so I didn't have to rely on someone else. Because we use OS in our curriculum, my children have learned how to build, sculpt, etc...and they actually help me a lot with my building. I know how to do it, but can't always guarantee it will look right. Some days are better than others, of course, but it's been a great addition for their curriculum and they've gained valuable knowledge in the process. Of course that might not be an option for everyone(and OS has it's own limitations), but for now, it's what works for me. 

I'm not sure a text viewer, even with the programming/coding needed just to build simply, would help with the more detailed aspects of building, like texturing, making certain scripts perform properly. At least, I haven't found anythign yet and I don't see the prospect of anyone creating anything that would function as needed. Though it would be really nice. It would be great to be able to finish more projects especially without help

[malukus]

One thing I was remembering is that the graphical interface of Delphi or Visual Basic used to come with pre-made objects. So I agree that drawing them would be much more difficult than just repositioning based on coordinates. On the other hand, a text viewer could have sort of templates with some objects and the possibility of creating your own templates. Then, the blind person could easily define coordinates inside the sandbox or home, and just edit the object's functions and sounds through code, like in programming. Another alternative, although that one I doubt would happen in a new future, would be to merge a text viewer with SL's official viewer, and a blind person could alternate between viewers with a keyboard shortcut, such as f12, etc. That way, we would have an updated version of both viewers without the need of searching for third party viewers who need to do stuff from scratch and still rarely catch up with most of the newest features...