[camlorn]

The fact that this is apparently written in java gives me hope--512mb server is a lot less than what I figured I'd need if I ever did a mud on the jvm. (it still might be--I want to do something like empiremud, which requires storing a lot in memory).

A separate client probably isn't needed in most cases. Yours apparently already renders stuff for raw telnet, but seriously, go have a look at godwars2 for examples of this. Mushclient already has blind support--there's a tiny plugin that can call my screen reader, as well as several others. All that's really needed is a sensible non-mouse targetting system and a text version of the maps; the latter is typically something like "to the southwest, you see" or perhaps better, for this type of game, a relative coordinate system (the player is always at the origin--all objects are translated, and listed such as "(-2,3) a repair bot", or something). Miriani does the latter, is fully blind accessible with a player-produced soundpack, and is space combat, so ymmv.

As for generating this data, well, the difficulty depends on how the underlying representation is done. To be honest, that's a whole new thread, probably, and depends greatly on the specific situation--godwars2 can, because the whole world isn't stored as a grid of 1ft by 1ft squares, or what-have-you. Not that storing the world as a grid is bad or prevents alternative interfaces, but it makes finding nearby objects very, very inefficient.

I'm not criticizing you, obit, I'm just trying to draw attention to it--miriani has around 15-30 blind players, so there is a market for blind-accessible muds of this type. If you start the project with this in mind, it honestly isn't that hard--the difficulty is in coming up with an accessible interface in the first place, given that the developer may or may not be blind him/herself. Again, I can't give much detail on this without specific questions.