A Blind Crusader Can be King

December 30, 2023 4:41 PM

After around a year and a half of work, this mod for Crusader Kings 3 has hit version 1.0. It converts the game's very graphical UI into plain text, and is thus screen reader accessible, thanks to OCR software.

The mod supports all the game's current downloadable content, and has already generated a couple of let's plays.

This project is particularly interesting not just because of the sheer amount of work involved, but because of the effort put into changing the UI to make it as smooth as possible to use with programs such as NVDA.

Future plans include support for the very famous Game of Thrones mod, and hopefully support for languages other than English down the line.

posted by Alensin (8 comments total)

This project has been one of the highlights of my gaming advocacy over the past year or so. Watching it grow has been a wonderful experience, and the serious amount of effort and dedication put in by a single modder deserves a great deal of recognition. I just wish we didnt have to do this kind of thing on our own, more or less, though I'm impressed that it's possible using the game's built-in modding tools.
posted by Alensin at 4:44 PM on December 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

This is great! CK3 is a really great game and I hope this will let more people join in. It seems like a perfect candidate to be made accessible in this way, since the game doesn't rely on graphics in pretty much any way other than having been made obligatory for UI purposes.
posted by dusty potato at 4:59 PM on December 30, 2023

Wow! Plus, what’s the proportion of people working on this mod to people working on the original game?
posted by clew at 5:09 PM on December 30, 2023

Realistically, a couple to, I don't know, however many Paradox has on multiple teams. One programmer and a few blind consultants. :)

The worst part is the waiting after major game updates, because those tend to break the UI. Of course this is going to be a lot more fragile than something part of the core game, and that bothers me because it doesn't have to be that way.
posted by Alensin at 5:21 PM on December 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Oh how fantastic! I agree with dusty potato: pretty much all the game of CK3 that's interesting is the story being told, text conveys a lot of it very well. I guess you can't see your throne room anymore but given how sad that DLC turned out, that may be for the best. I imagine the map is tedious on a screen reader but it looks like the UI still has it on screen, may be of use with folks with some but limited vision.

There's been a lot of work on accessibility UI in gaming recently. Both Sony and Xbox are serious about it. One really nice thing is an optional menu with many fine-grained configuration choices; Spiderman 2 is a good recent example. The defaults are fine. But if you want to tone down the flashing lights or skip the quicktime events or make some of the fiddly UI a little easier, there's optionss for that.

Like so many accessibility affordances it's not just folks with particular disabilities who benefit, a whole lot of gamers are finding it's nice to be able to customize the experience.
posted by Nelson at 5:52 PM on December 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Now everyone can lose all productivity and hope of finishing their work equally!

(I say this with love, as a CK3 addict who has vowed not to play any more until law school is over)
posted by corb at 9:00 PM on December 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Oooh, now even blind folks can have their ruler marry their sister-daughter for the sweet inheritable traits!
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:53 AM on December 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Bravo!
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on December 31, 2023