First of all... I'd like to thank everyone thus far for the constructive and inquiring comments... when writing this, I was sure that I would be flamed out of the park for putting down graphical mud clients.
I'm so glad to see that some of you are thinking this through, and making accessibility a priority.
Ide is right... Jiglu is a popular blind gamers forum... as is , as well as various forums on .
I'd also like to let you all know that it is possible to create scripts for the various screenreaders that assist in making difficult environments more blind-friendly. I'm doing my best at the moment to learn exactly how this is done... and I plan on using these skills to make some of the more advanced mud clients out there more accessible. As it is, there are a very few clients that are entirely accessible. MonkeyTerm is popular among blind mudders, as it is easy to add sound effects too, and the various features are pretty easy to access. JMC (Java Mud Client) is another widely used client, especially now that an update has come out that will allow us to set up sound packs, and to control winamp straight from the client. Zmud and Mushclient are sometimes used... but not without scripts, and I don't believe that all features are easily accessible. Gmud is another popular client... generally because of it's simplistic nature. And there is a new mud-client made especially for blind mudders called VIPMud... and though I haven't had much experience with this client (I'm a jmc user myself) I've heard many good things about it.
There is of course the problems within the muds themselves. Some muds offer copius amounts of ascii art. Many muds display help files and street signs with boarders, and some muds display vast wildernesses and maps which are made up of nothing but ascii art. Alter Aeon for example has bypassed this distraction by opening another port with which blind players can connect to the game, and while this port connects to the same game world with the same players, it is extremely lacking in extra spam and unneeded ascii art.
Imagine listening to every bit of text that scrolls onto the screen. This would include room descriptions, combat messages, channel spam, who/score/inventory/equipment lists, as well as the <>%_~ symbols that make up maps and boarders and artistic headings.
Because of the spam, most blind gamers have learned to listen to their screenreaders at a speed of 300 words per minute and up... but sometimes that's not enough.
I hope that I'm not boring you all... I just thought that it would be a good idea to let you all know of the ins and outs of mudding as a blind person.
Thanks again for your input and interest!
Carry on
Brawny