The IFTF Accessibility Testing Project Report

In 2010 I appeared in a documentary about interactive fiction called Get Lamp. You may also know interactive fiction as text adventure games. I loved playing them as a kid on my Apple II/e, later the II/GS, and on my Keynote PC+ running a crappy version of MSDOS 2.1.1 burned into the ROM. Infocom made many of the well known games. Authoring tools allowed anyone to create these games, and thanks to these tools the art form continues to this day.

At some point - I don’t even remember when - I received an invitation to join the accessibility testing committee of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. The blind have always enjoyed text adventures, but they have become less accessible as the technology has changed. This committee wanted to help by writing a report to the interactive fiction community. I agreed, and the quest began.

Meetings happened off and on for some time. In 2016 they got Jason McIntosh to manage things. He wrote a blog post of his own. We began having biweekly meetings. Authors wrote two games for testing. Earlier this year we recruited testers. We did not get as many screen reader users as we had hoped, so a few of us put out the call and luckily some of you answered. Finally we bring you the finished report!

This report will permanently live at this address, so make sure to bookmark accessibility.iftechfoundation.org and share it to all relevant communities.