Aardwolf recognizes that some of our visually impaired players may not have access to helpful tools, such as maps, that are available to others, and while immortals, the Helper team, and other players are always willing to help, several players who have been around Aardwolf for a very long time (many of whom are visually impaired) have contributed to these files as a way to enhance the Aardwolf experience of those who mud differently.

General Tips.

From the people who know it best, here are a few tips from some of our current VI players.

- Screenreaders are happiest when they can read in black and white, not color.

- Running with punctuation off in your screenreader makes a world of difference so you don't hear "dash dash dash" or "equals equals equals" in MUD output.

- Reduce spam immediately! Read 'help spamreduce' file. This includes turning off damage spam by typing nospam, battlespam, and groupspam.

- Use 'brief 1' to set your character to only read descriptions when first entering a new room rather than every time you enter a room.

- Keep channels to a minimum. Keep newbie and question channels on. The rest are nice, but not necessary. Turn them on as you get used to the MUD.

- Make sure you are using Aardwolf's tell catching system- type 'catchtell' to turn it on. It will save your tells and allow you to replay them at your leisure rather than displaying them right away.

- When in a room, use the glance command to see quick information about the room without having to read the entire room description again. More information can be found in 'help glance'.

- Channels have a history. You can replay what you may have missed on a channel by typing channelname dash h. If you want to limit it further, put a number like 5 or 10 after the h to only replay the last 5 or 10 things said on that channel.

- Turn off automap and maprun. It's a lot of extra info that only confuses screen readers.

- Use audio Triggers. You will quickly learn (and can ask) what output is used when something happens. For example, you can set an audio trigger on the message that you are able to quest again, or when double experience starts.

- Once comfortable with Aardwolf and your client, tags can be very useful in filtering out only the data you want. The helpfile 'help tags' has more information.

If you have a suggestion we might have missed, don't hesitate to tell a Helper or post a note to Imm on the personal board, and we'll gladly add it here and on the in game helps.

Additional Assistance

For additional VI related helps, please read: