Wyrmworks Publishing How do we improve accessibility in tabletop games? Weclome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make other people's lives better. If you haven't already checked it out, I invite you to sign up for our newsletter, our weekly email that goes out and we've added a new feature to that that I think I'm really excited about. We are creating a program for role playing game accessibility and what we're doing is we're inviting the those who are subscribed to our weekly email to get access oftentimes early preview access to new role playing games, role playing game supplements, things like that the publishers are sending to us for you to look at and then give them feedback on accessibility. And that can be whether it's, you're blind, and so you're using a screen reader. You're colorblind. We recently had a map and the and the creator wanted to know is this map colorblind accessible? If you have dyslexia, and so you need certain fonts, formatting, things like that, that they'd really like to make their content more accessible to a broader audience. So regardless what your accessibility needs are, this is your opportunity to speak to the roleplaying game community to the creators and say this is what you can do to make your products more accessible. And, and so they get a chance to get their product in front of a bunch of people and to say, hey, we really care about accessibility and hopefully, that will encourage people to take a closer look at their products. And so that'll help them out but it also helps you out by getting see these new products that are coming out or even some of it is going through revisions and things like that, and so you get free access to a bunch of stuff that way. And it just makes the entire community the entire industry accessible and encourages more publishers to take accessibility into account. And so if you are interested in that, you just jump over to our website WyrmworksPublishing.com link in the show notes and you can go find out you can just go sign up there and and find out more about it and in addition you get all kinds of free things from us just for signing up and news about upcoming products and things like that. And so with that said, let's get right into our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing So often people with disabilities are treated as if they're incapable of doing things when the real problem is an environment or culture that removes access. But what happens when the world recognizes that disabled people exist? Today we welcome RPG designer, advocate, and consultant Katriel Page. Welcome Katrie. Katriel Page Hi, nice to be here. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the TTRPG crowd? Katriel Page I do creative work on my own for community content as well as freelance freelance work professionally as well. So I've worked with publishers like Onyx Path. I've worked with High Level Games Publishing, I did it for for Chaosium, which was really fun. So you'll see me in multiple places. I also tend to be an advocate for TTRPG accessibility in that space. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so tell us about that work that you do is both a designer and an advocate and consultant. Katriel Page I try and help with there's a couple of aspects to it. I try to help with document accessibility. Even though it can get complicated when you're dealing with conflicting access needs, or even things like cost. Checking against screen readers. For example, certain screen readers costs a lot of money for licenses, or things like PDFs or document accessibility. Considering how frequently used PDFs are obviously in the tabletop space. Tagging PDFs can only be done with like, two software applications that I know of. So things like that can get tricky balancing that all out. But I try and advocate for people to just kind of do what they can. Even things like alt text or checking their headings can do so much. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, Alt text also very few PDF creators that can actually do that. It seems Katriel Page very few PDFs will actually do that. I think it's the same 2 that can do the tags. Katriel Page Yeah. Yeah, it's very irritating. And they're expensive. Katriel Page Irritating on my end as well. Wyrmworks Publishing I've done a lot of research into that trying to make our stuff as accessible as possible. And it's frustrating after I've talked to to the companies and saying, Hey, so when are you adding this functionality and they don't ever have an answer. So that's frustrating. Katriel Page Now, that being said, I've actually taken some things from tabletop design. And they're useful in other places, for example, in tech, because tabletop, for better or worse, has a print paradigm. So it's used to people looking at the books for better or for worse. And we can get into that. But because of that, there's more emphasis on distinguishing different kinds of headings and different kinds of information. That is not always done in tech. So on terms of matching the semantics and the sort of levels of information. There are certain kinds of tricks that I'm taking from tabletop design as well. Which is interesting to me because it's usually the other way around. Right. You know, please use your semantic markups; please use alt text. So it's kind of interesting when there are those situations where I can take things that tabletop design is kind of really good at. Wyrmworks Publishing Oh, well, that's fascinating. It's not you wouldn't normally think of it that way. Katriel Page You wouldn't but because at least because of the print paradigm, you'd have to make sure that different levels of headings are distinguishable but you're only really given such a narrow band of how the headings can be because of the print paradigm. Or you know, usually the its print first and then it gets converted into PDFs and such. So when you're having, say applications or mobile apps or something where again, you might not have a wider band to play with, you can't design for you know, a large TV screen or something like that. You have that narrow visual band, in terms of what the headings can be. That's something that tabletop design actually excels at, which is really weird for me, so it's just like wait, what, like this one thing it does really well. Okay. And also just the fact that most publishers at least and I'm not sure there's a wide variety among community creators, but there's much wider and enforced use of please use a style ribbon for semantics. So headings, visual headings actually are classed as headings. So there are certain things that tabletop design does really well with document accessibility. Wyrmworks Publishing Oh, yes. Yeah. Katriel Page Which I wasn't expecting. I was expecting it to be like, Oh no, this is completely horrible. But there are some things it does really well. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that caught me just looking at the from Wizards of the Coast the fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons style guide. It is specific about which heading levels you should use for different things. There's not not a lot of direction but there is some and I thought Wow, that's fascinating and in fact that it presents a challenge. If because I have a tendency to go I started out with an outline and I tend to be pretty deep in levels and then all of a sudden, I've got a monster stat block and then I go okay, what do I do with this? Katriel Page Oh, no formatting, formatting stat blocks inside … is a thing that I think tabletop design hasn't really figured out yet and everybody hates whether you're a community creator or a publisher doing layout. Everybody does that, like that part, I don't think. But again, there's some things that aren't expected and I kind of like seeing those unexpected things of, oh wait, you know, this is really good at this and also the fact that in the community and tabletop, there has been a wider push in the last few years for accessibility, both from publishers and community creators. Wyrmworks Publishing You think that just in general COVID had anything to do with that? Katriel Page I think so to be honest. Um, there's been a push in game accessibility and there's been a push in tech accessibility before that. But I think, and this is unfortunate, because I don't want to say don't want to say that the pandemic was a good thing. But it exposed so much of the problem that people kept putting accessibility off and because so many people are dealing with acquired chronic illnesses now derived from COVID, or they're dealing with trauma or just multitasking because they might have other people in the room now. They're working from home, whatever the case may be. There's been a greater and greater push at all levels, whether it's websites, tech documents, the push to work from home you know, that was a thing that people with disabilities have been fighting for. Cuz being a person with disabilities and being disabled doesn't necessarily mean that you're on benefits. And a lot of us do work. And for years, we I had heard Oh, you can't work from home, you can't work from home. It's too costly. And that was like no, we clearly can so please keep this as an option. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah. And not only can you in a lot of cases it's cheaper because you don't need to rent as much office space and all kinds of things like that. Katriel Page Right, right. So I think I think factors like that definitely played into a greater and greater push over the last couple years. Wyrmworks Publishing So you know, just thinking about converting a document to be used in a virtual tabletop like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds or one of the others. If it's properly formatted to begin with. Katriel Page It's so much easier if it's properly formatted to begin with, it makes it so much easier. It's still gonna be a pain to do, right? Like there's still a process you have to go through but doing what you can to start with makes everything else so much easier. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. Just that was you know, when we were first talking to our layout editor for Limitless Heroics. Yeah. I said, you know, there's a lot of people really want ePub or mobi, or something like that. And they said, Well, you know, in that case, then we start with that, and it's a lot easier to convert from that to PDF than from paleo to that, and, you know, because yeah, it pushes those kind of those standards and, and then I was talking to somebody about Roll20 conversion and, and he said, Yeah, well, if you if you already have it in ePub, then that's a lot easier to convert. And, oh, well. How can we get Katriel Page into things like again, then you have the price lock of to get a really good ebook formatter, or somebody who knows how to do it by hand. You know, that can be a barrier for a lot of people, especially if you're already a disabled creator, and you're already dealing with disability access needs, right? Like you might design it based on what works for you, but then realize, oh, I completely forgot about color coding. Right? Right. So yeah, yeah, Wyrmworks Publishing yeah, accessibility…. I mean, we've been talking about. I'll give you an example. Some just over the past couple days that we've been talking about is how do you format tables? Katriel Page That is the bane of my existence. To be honest, I mean, I'm making fun of it. But my day job is as an accessibility specialist. So tables comes up pretty often. And even when you have a website framework where you can't have like semantically, you know, this is a table cell and the structure it's still a pain. It's a pain in documents too. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, just talking about shading and borders that we've got Katriel Page And using gutters properly and like making sure that the information is associated. And when you have the more complex a table is the harder it is. Wyrmworks Publishing Yep. Yeah. And for some people alternating like called Zebra shading, Katriel Page zebra shading. That actually works pretty well for me, but you have to be really careful with it. Wyrmworks Publishing Right? And I've heard some people say, that doesn't help me at all. I need like three to one. Kind of Katriel Page Fonts are also they've think typefaces are a big thing, and there's really no good answer to that one. There are fonts that people create to help with dyslexia and other issues, but the data is very sparse, some fonts work better for other people. Some fonts depend on where you use them. For example, one font may be great for headings and not great for body text, right. There are guidelines in terms of don't justify your text and leave running streams of white everywhere. But another thing might be I example, I really liked Serif fonts, they work really well for me. But the guideline for typefaces and accessibility generally is choose a typeface that distinguishes between commonly mistaken characters. Wyrmworks Publishing Yep. Katriel Page Ls and Is for example. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Katriel Page Os and zeros. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, and, you know, I've I've talked just recently I was talking to some people on Reddit that were looking for help on dyslexia friendly layouts and formatting and stuff and, and I gave just some of those real basic kind of things. Here's, here's kind of some of the things to know but also recognize because they're saying, Well, you know, I've used the open dyslexia font, but I just, you know, I'm really looking for something different. I said, Well, you know, I've talked to people in it, and then some people like it, and some people don't; some people like Comic Sans and a lot of people hate it. And, you know, and, and for some people, it's helpful and, and you know, for other people that same font, they'll say no, that, that font really messes me up. Katriel Page And I actually have a lot of problems with those fonts. So it really depends and conflicting access needs in that case is a thing because one might work for one person and not work for the next. But there is a set of sort of guidelines and data that we can still use to kind of guide that those decisions or things like no matter what font you use, check to see if there's enough contrast, check to see if the information is parsible in plain text and not just do images everywhere. Make sure there's captions like there's other things that you can kind of use to mitigate that. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Katriel Page Yeah, it's gets complicated very fast, but because people if you're new to accessibility, people generally want like, Okay, what tool can I use to make this entire thing accessible? The answer is usually not. What one font, can I just check a box for and install and be fine? And the answer is not really. Like that's not really the approach that you're looking for. You really have to rethink that approach to begin with. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Yeah. And, and Kickstarter pages are terrible. Katriel Page That actually brings up an issue of when you're when you're a creator, and you want to convert things over for online play like Roll20 or any virtual tabletop really. Now you're dealing with multiple combined issues of now the platform needs to be accessible and you don't have control over that. And generally speaking, they're not in certain ways. Keyboard navigation is terrible. For a lot of them, because they, you know, you can't really do that with with that you might be able to do it on the character sheets. So there's different aspects to accessibility that document accessibility tends to deal with certain things. But when you're dealing with virtual tabletops, okay, those might not be accessible at all. So what do you lose and what kind of can you do as a creator? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. We were I've been talking to a developer who does plugins for the Foundry virtual tabletop and and we've been talking about, would it be possible to create a plugin that provides more accessibility especially since so much is mouse dependent. And to be able to be able to use a mouse in such a way that it works like a Geiger counter, where the as you approach different things, you get audible feedback. So you can find where the tokens are and things like that. And so we're just kind of bouncing ideas around right now. But you also have to have Foundry has that plug in structure, not all of them do. And, and, Katriel Page Yeah, not all of them do, and, yeah, I know that there's been, again with that push in accessibility last couple of years. It also kind of exposed the lack of accessibility for a lot of things. And, again, you know, even even in that case of one platform like Roll20, we have a community created sheets as well. Some sheets may be more accessible than others. The platform may not be accessible in certain places. It's an ongoing thing that I really want them to prioritize, but I'm not them. So there's only so much I can do. And generally in terms of the web accessibility side, you want to avoid plugins and overlays. That that's unfortunately becoming a major problem because with the Americans with Disabilities Act official guidance saying yes, you know, electronic accessibility is part of the ADA there's been stores and creater shops and a bunch of things that will use overlays and say like, oh, great, now I don't have to worry, you know, these overlays promise, a fix in a single line of code. I just have to add this and it's fine. When you read the fine print for them. They basically say that they can't stop you from getting sued. They can't stop you. They can't promise that you're going to be remotely you know, adhering to the guidelines. So it's a whole test right now. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. That kind of thing is definitely an issue. Katriel Page Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing So how have you seen lives changed or what changes have you seen because of your work? Katriel Page What changes have I seen because of my work? Um, I try to give creaters a little bit more of a start. A lot of them are trying to do what they can. They're starting from a good place. They just don't know where to start. And especially if you're so used to things like using a mouse all the time and so you don't know what it's like to do keyboard navigation on a site. You don't know why that might be important. You don't know why alt text might be important. These are fairly simple, basic things. But you're starting out. You might, even if you get that it's important, you might not know why and what impact it has. You might not understand why, you know, making sure a list is actually marked up as a list is important. And that sounds really basic. And I don't mean to dismiss that. It's just when you're not used to dealing with it every day, getting used to that framework and changing your expectations is a lot of work. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. Katriel Page So yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. So you had just rescued a djinn from the hands of an efreeti, and it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for? Katriel Page The serious answer is for people to not be jerks all the time intentionally. Because that's really what a lot of it boils down to. Accidents happen, misunderstandings happen, but there's a lot of myths around disability. There's a lot of myths around inclusion. There's a lot of myths and assumptions that people have. And they get to the point where you just fight each other over it. You just chill out. Unfortunately, we're not at that point. But you know, if it was a genie, that's that's a little different, right? I can wish for world peace if I want to, um, as far as the other wishes I don't know like, favorite food. Oh, a really awesome electric scooter like not like electric scooter. Like little like you just put your leg on it. I mean, like electric wheelchair scooter. I'm chronically ill. So it's a case of like, Oh man, I my mobility is kind of not the greatest as it was. Um, I type all the time for a living. Fibromyalgia and carpal tunnel are not a great combination. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah. Katriel Page So having something from ability would would definitely help me but I want all all virtual tabletops to be accessible overnight. Yes. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. What one message would you like to give gamers who are members of marginalized communities? Katriel Page It's exhausting. I know it's not really an inspirational message. Because if you're living with being marginalized every day, whether it's on one axis or multiple axes, you know different types. It's exhausting. Survival is resistance. And it sounds corny, but it is like just living another day with all of the stuff that we have to go through in our lives is really exhausting. And it's okay to take a break and say, hey, you know, I don't have to overcome everything all at once all the time. I can take a moment for myself. I can try and rest and do what I can. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, what what message would you like to give gamers who are not members of marginalized communities? Katriel Page Listen to us. And I know that's a very simple advice, but a lot of people don't or they'll say, Oh, I know better than you or you're just being hysterical. Or it's not really like that. I haven't seen it. Well, of course, you might not have seen it. You're not but you don't you're not the subject of the marginalization, right? Um, so just just listen and call it out when you see it. If you're, you know, in a group of people and they're all being you know, somebody makes a comment. You could just say, hey, that's not cool. Call it out. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I find I try to call things out when I see them and sometimes, especially when it comes to ableism, because it's so common in our culture. Katriel Page I mean, yeah, Wyrmworks Publishing I just, I feel exhausted. And then I think how much more exhausted is someone you know, for whom it's, it's their life. Katriel Page It's every day. Right, yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. For you know, for me, it's more just, you know, I'll see something on TV and go, Oh, come on, you know, or, you know, things like that and, but it's not it's sort of thing. I can turn off the TV and Katriel Page Right, you can turn it off. You don't have. Yeah, but for a lot of us, we can't, Wyrmworks Publishing right. Yeah, so no, absolutely. Right. So are there projects that you're working on now that you can talk about? Katriel Page That I can talk about? There's a couple of community content projects I'm really excited for. There's one that's already out that I co designed. It's a current dungeoncraft with the current season for Adventurer's League. It's called 2 to Tengu. It's based off of, or rather inspired by Japanese folklore and the actual place the actual place of Mount Kurama which is a religious complex and holy mountain. But we took some folklore about tengu and played around with interpreting that from the lens of the domains of delight that is the current focus of the Dungencraft season. Wyrmworks Publishing Huh. Katriel Page Yeah! Wyrmworks Publishing I had a book on mythology when I was a kid and it talked about tengu and I've always kind of found them interesting and and so you know, hearing you say that, I think, wow, that Katriel Page Mythology is one of my special interests. So folklore and mythology. So it's really fun to work on projects like that. I can just kind of riff on them and we do have a further reading section and inspiration section. Because yeah, we're riffing on these and adding our sort of take through the lens of you know, the Feywild and the Archfey, but these are traditions in Japan these This is Japanese folklore. So basically saying hey, if your…eferences, here's resources, if you want to know more of the actual place or the you know, different things about the existing war, we're trying to give that as well. It's great because somebody can be disabled and still be you know, horribly, you know, insensitive in other ways. So, we're trying to do what we can, it's, it's kind of a balancing act, to not want to talk over people but also, if we're going to be more or less to our point putting, you know, putting that out there. We want to point to these resources and things that are available to people Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, I love that. All right, anything else? Katriel Page I also worked on Dystopia Rising Evolution, which was published through Onyx Path using the Storypath system and I'm very proud of the work that was done there because it flat out says that it's a post apocalyptic zombie game, so maybe people don't want to play in the middle of a pandemic. But there's an explicit line there saying that disabled lives matter, that you're still living and in a world you know, where there might be zombies of various kinds and, and that sort of is perceived differently. It's nice to be able to see that in a work of fiction of saying that we matter too. Also there's crafting rules. If you want to add, you know, salvaged jet engines to a wheelchair, you totally can. Wyrmworks Publishing Awesome! Katriel Page Use a stress track to incorporate things like not just trauma, but just things like stress, it's added to the combat track. There's things like you can totally use a cane as a melee weapon if you want to, as well as a balance aid. There's a lot of fun things that we did in terms of representation and inclusion there. That I really enjoy. Wyrmworks Publishing That sounds great. All right. So we will have all your contact information in our show notes. But where's the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Katriel Page Probably Twitter to be honest. I'm not sure about other social media Twitter is usually where I'm most active. I will give it a slight warning though. My account is just one account. So it's gonna have tabletop stuff, as well as a bunch of other things. So know what you're getting into getting into all of it. That being said, I also have a website where I do have tabletop resources, especially with people getting into accessibility and wanting to improve their accessibility. Just resources that they can check out for different areas of that. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, well, thanks so much for coming on the show. We'll have those links in the show notes. Everyone, check out those links. Katriel Page Alright, it's great to be here with you and I hope everyone has a great rest of their day or whenever they're listening to this Wyrmworks Publishing So a few reminders before we close first of all, when we have people available, we laso include a segment in our show called playing the other where people with disabilities, neurodiversity, and mental illness come and talk about their experience as it relates to gaming. This is also a chance for creators if you're a creator to talk about some of the cool stuff that you've made. And if you'd like to be a guest on that segment, just jump over to Wyrmworkspublishing.com/contact and send us a note. Shout out to all of our patrons, our patrons on Patreon. We really appreciate your monthly support. And if you would like to help us do all the things that we do, all you got to do is go over to our website Wyrmworkspublishing.com. You'll see a link there to jump into our Patreon. Recently, we added Cindy and Cindy thank you so much, and those who are part of our Patreon, we will have lots of we've got some really great exciting stuff coming this summer once we finish up with Limitless Heroics. And part of that is already a lot of previews, artwork, all kinds of things like that, that are in our Discord server. And when you become a patron at any level you get access to our company Discord server. Wyrmworks Publishing And so if you see this show, or any of the things that we offer being helpful, please hit that like button if that's applicable to how you're consuming this. If you'd like to see more, subscribe to this in your favorite location. If you know people that need to hear this, please pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think that everyone needs to hear this pass this on via social media networks. And so please don't forget those podcast ratings. That really helps people find our content. So thank you all for your time. And let me close with this question. How could tabletop role playing games be more accessible to you?