This manual describes AudioGameAccess in general. Each game also has its own manual: during a game, or in a game's menu, F1 opens the manual of that game.
To go back to the game, close this tab, or switch to the AudioGameAccess window with Alt+Tab.
AudioGameAccess is a platform of audio games, made first of all for blind and visually impaired people. Everything is played by ear and with the keyboard, with your screen reader and your braille display.
You can play alone, offline, or online with other players at the casino: game tables, messages, a voice chat, friends and leaderboards.
AudioGameAccess is available for Windows, Mac and iPhone.
Use headphones: the sound is placed around you, and headphones let you hear it best.
Download the installer from audiogameaccess.com, then run it. The folder offered is C:\Program Files\AudioGameAccess, and you can choose another one. Windows asks for your consent.
Updates are automatic. Each time it starts, AudioGameAccess checks for a newer version. If there is one, it downloads it, installs it and restarts by itself. Windows only asks for your consent to install it. Without Internet, the game starts normally and tries again the next time.
Playing online needs the latest version. That is why updates cannot be declined.
AudioGameAccess speaks through your screen reader. On Windows, it works with NVDA and with JAWS. Without either, it goes through Windows Narrator. On Mac and iPhone, it speaks through VoiceOver.
Every phrase spoken is also shown on your braille display, and the line you are on stays shown there.
The Control key stops the speech, as usual.
To change a value, such as a volume, use Shift+Up arrow and Shift+Down arrow everywhere. When the value changes, you only hear the new value.
At your table, as at the casino: Start the game, Players at the table and Leave the table, and for some games, such as poker, Game options; B seats a bot, Shift+B sends one away. A game you leave halfway through is found in the Saved tables. Your best scores are in your offline leaderboards.
During a game played alone, Escape opens the pause: Resume, Settings, or Back to the menu.
Each game has its manual, with its rules and keys: F1 during the game or at its table opens it. Today there are archery, blackjack, Texas Hold'em poker, President, Hangman and Feather Flight.
As in a program with tabs, AudioGameAccess has several views, always on the same keys:
Messages, the voice chat and Friends need you to be logged in to the casino. Offline, these views stay closed, and a sentence tells you how to log in. The game and the leaderboards always open.
Escape, in a view, takes you back to the game.
The Settings have three tabs: General, Audio and Privacy. Move from one tab to the next with Control+Tab. OK keeps your changes, Cancel drops them.
These settings are kept on the server, so you need to be logged in to change them. For each one, you choose: nobody, everyone except blocked players, only your friends, or your friends and their friends.
Without opening the Settings, F5 chooses the volume to adjust, in a loop: effects, ambience, dealers, notifications, music, stream, voice chat and microphone; Shift+F5 goes round the other way. F6 lowers it and F7 raises it, 5% at a time.
With 3D sound in headphones, sounds are placed around you as in real life: ahead, on the sides and behind you. At a table, the other players are spread all around you, and each keeps their place for the whole game, for their sounds as for their voice. The farther someone is, the fainter and softer they sound.
Each game has its place, with its own resonance, for instance the arena of archery. The sounds that guide you, such as an aiming tone, and the voice chat never resonate: they stay clear.
If you play on loudspeakers, turn 3D sound off in the Settings: sounds are then simply placed left or right.
Between the moment a sound starts and the moment your key press reaches the game, there is always a short delay, due to your headphones, your sound card and your keyboard. The test measures it: listen to 4 low beats, then press Space together with each of the 8 high beats.
The games that judge the moment of your key press, such as archery, then make up for this delay. You can reset the latency to zero from the same menu.
Choose Online games in the main menu, then log in, or create an account.
The casino is the meeting place. Messages and players' arrivals are announced by themselves. There you find:
If your connection drops, the game reconnects by itself, and your seat at the table is kept for a minute.
When your turn has a time limit, the game warns you: 10 seconds before the end, it says the time left, then it counts the last 5 seconds with beeps, or with the dealer's voice at the blackjack. If you are in another window, an old clock ticks for 3 seconds before that, and the game tells you it is your turn.
Control+2 opens Messages. The first list gives your contacts: the casino, your table if you are seated, then the players, each with "online" or "offline" and their unread messages. Tab moves to the conversation. Each message is a heading: your messages at level 1, the others' at level 2, so you move through them with your screen reader's heading keys. Type your message in the field, then press Enter to send it. A message has at most 500 characters.
Control+3 opens your table's voice chat. The list first gives "All voices", then each person at the table, you included.
You can listen to an Internet radio while you play. Control+P opens the stream player: choose one of the last 50 radios you listened to, or type an address. While it plays, Control+P stops the stream, and Control+Shift+P says the current title.
A table's creator can also share a radio with the whole table, with the choice "Me and the whole table". Control+P then stops it for the whole table when the host presses it, and for themselves only when another player does.
The stream has its own volume, in the Settings and with F5.
Control+4 opens Friends. There you find your friends list, friend requests, the players present and all players. On a player's line, you can send them a message or a friend request, invite them to your table, join theirs, accept or decline their request, cancel yours, or remove them from your friends.
Each friend's line says where they are: at the casino, at a table, in a game, or offline for so many days. You are also told when a friend arrives at the casino or leaves it.
At the casino, in the list of players, you can also block a player, so you no longer hear their messages, or report them to the administrators.
Your privacy settings are described in the Settings section.
Control+5 opens the History: everything the game told you since it started, the newest at the bottom. You always arrive on the last message. Your screen reader reads it in browse mode, with headings:
Each line ends with its time, seconds included, for instance "You win 50 chips. 21:04:32".
With NVDA or JAWS, 1, 2 and 3 jump from one heading of that level to the next, and Shift with the key goes back. The menus' lines and the answers to a key, such as your cards or your balance, do not go there. The history is erased when you close AudioGameAccess; to keep it, choose Save the history in the main menu.
Control+0 opens the Leaderboards. For each game, and for each level of a game, you see:
The week starts on Monday.
The Mac and iPhone versions are still being prepared: some features of this manual are not there yet.
On Mac, the shortcuts use the Command key instead of Control, for instance Command+2 for Messages, and Command+comma opens the Settings. Command+Shift+H gives the exact list of the shortcuts available on your Mac.
What is new in each version is in the list of the changes, with Control+F1.
For any question, visit audiogameaccess.com.