Accessible Solitaire

Accessible Solitaire Version 5.0 contains the two menu actions: “Restart this game”, and “Start new game”, and an Undo feature. All of these new features were suggested by players of the app.

Also, all the optional buttons which can be shown on the main page of the app, are now shown in a line at the top of the app. The optional buttons are: “Start new game”, “Undo”, “Pause/Resume”, and the three screen reader buttons: “Game state”, “Available moves”, and “Open cards”.

The “Restart this game” action restarts the game currently being played, with the same set of dealt cards, for players who want to try the same game again. The “Start new game” action will start a fresh game, dealing out a new set of cards.

The “Restart this game” and “Start new game” actions are available in the app menu. A setting is available in the app’s Settings page to have a “Start new game” button shown at the top of the app.

The new Undo action in the app is a single-level undo feature, meaning that the most recent action taken in a game can be reverted, but only the most recent action. So the Undo button cannot be repeatedly pressed to undo a sequence of the most recent actions.

The undo feature is very helpful if some action is unintentionally taken in a game, or when a specific alternative move wants to be tried. For example, in the Tri Peaks game or Royal Parade game, you might have a choice of two available cards to click, and you don’t know which will be most helpful to you. You could click one of the cards, then undo that action, and then click the other card and decide which of the two cards you’d prefer to go with.

A setting is available in the app’s Settings page to have an “Undo” button shown at the top of the app. If some action is reverted through that button, the button then becomes disabled. If the Undo item in the app’s menu is clicked when no action can currently be reverted, a screen reader will announce: “No undo action is available”.

If the Undo button is enabled when a screen reader navigates to it, the announcement will begin with: “Undo”, followed by some details about what action can be reverted.

When the Undo button becomes disabled after clicking it, a screen reader might announce the new disabled state of the button, before it announces some details about what action was reverted. The undo announcement may not include details of all cards involved in the reverted action, but will include the name of at least one of the cards.

If the Undo button is clicked using the keyboard on Windows and the button becomes disabled, keyboard focus will move to the next button in the app. As such, a screen reader will announce some details of that newly focused button before announcing details about the action that was reverted.

Improving the Accessible Solitaire app

Players’ feedback will really help me learn where I need to improve the app, and make it more fun to play. For example:

1. It’s possible I’ve missed some situation where an undo should be available, but isn’t. There are many actions which can be taken across the seven solitaire games currently in the app, and while I hope I’ve provided a way to undo them all, perhaps I’ve missed something. Also, it’s always possible I’ve made a mistake and some undo action does not revert the entire previous move in the game, but hopefully that’s not the case.
2. I’m sure the announcements made when an action is reverted, or the details added to the enabled Undo button, can be improved to be more helpful. Or perhaps in some cases the announcement made when an action is reverted is missing altogether.
3. In many cases across the games, a screen reader will announce the number of cards in a set, and the position of a particular card in that set. For example, when playing the Pyramid or Tri Peaks games. These numbers get changed when related actions are taken in the games, and need to be reverted when the action is undone. While I’m not aware of any case when the reverted numbers are not adjusted as required, if you hit an unexpected result in that area, please do let me know.
4. In some cases, a screen reader’s announcements about a change in focus will interrupt, or even prevent, another announcement about something happening in the game. If any of these cases severely impact the game-playing experience, I can try to improve those specific cases.
5. When adding the Undo feature for the Polish version of the game, I added some translations provided by Google Translate, which I’m sure will not all be right in the context of the game. If you have any suggestions for improved Polish translations, or would like the game in some other language and would be prepared to provide the translations, I could hopefully update the game accordingly.

If you have any suggestions around any of the above, your ideas would be much appreciated and hopefully will improve the games for everyone.