EMS accessibility

GRIP-EMS aims to be usable for players who rely on screen readers, play one-handed, play with tremor, play with low vision, or avoid motion in the UI. Settings live under the Accessibility subpanel (/gems settings -> Accessibility). Design vocabulary follows AbleGamers APX (Accessible Player Experiences). The in-game panel layout is modelled on Elder Scrolls Online's Accessibility Mode: one place, grouped by population.

This document lists the accessibility features EMS ships. Structural limits (things the WoW addon API does not expose) are called out separately in section 4.

Features

Vision

• Screen readers via Blizzard's built-in text-to-speech (C_VoiceChat.SpeakText). Speaks the current step label when a sequence advances. One-shot in-game toast if no voice is configured.
• A chat-frame emitter pipes the same state messages into a user-selected chat frame (default hidden frame #9). BlindSlash, NVDA bridges, and other screen-reader relays can dock that frame and read from it.
• UI scale (all EMS panels) slider from 0.8x to 2.0x in 0.05 steps. The main window drag-resizes from 720x640 up to the screen less 50 px on each side.
• High-contrast focus ring on every focusable widget (4-edge texture, 2 px thick, 2 px outset).
• Font switch via LibSharedMedia with Atkinson Hyperlegible bundled. The bundled face carries Latin characters only, with no Cyrillic, Hangul or CJK glyphs, so LibSharedMedia does not offer it on Korean, Chinese or Russian clients. The Accessibility panel says so on those locales instead of leaving a gap in the list. Every other font stays available there.
• Colourblind support: three palette presets (Default, High Contrast, Deuteranopia-safe) resolved from Blizzard's colorblindMode CVar, which is re-read live rather than sampled once, plus an 8-type matrix (protanopia, protanomaly, deuteranopia, deuteranomaly, tritanopia, tritanomaly, achromatopsia, achromatomaly) with a 0-100% strength slider layered on top. Live 5-colour preview swatch next to the slider.
• Photosensitivity: no repeating flashes. Animations audited against WCAG 2.3.1 "Three Flashes or Below Threshold". The reduce-motion toggle below also applies.
• Flicker-safe palette: damps alpha-animation delta ranges below the WCAG threshold at the two animation sites (Tempo overlay alert pulse, Tracker HUD highlight). Auto-mirrors from Blizzard's screenEdgeFlash CVar on first login.
• Contrast warnings: when a class colour fails WCAG 2.2 contrast, a toast in the top-right offers Dismiss (silences the class for 30 minutes) or Auto-fix (writes a passing background colour and silences the class for 7 days). The Per-Element Theming editor lists silenced classes with per-class Unsilence buttons and a header count badge. An Unsilence all action clears every silence at once; with 4 or more silenced classes it asks for confirmation first.

Motion and vestibular

• Reduce-motion toggle disables the two animation sites in the addon (Tempo overlay pulse, Tracker fade-in).

Motor

• Keyboard-first navigation using Tab / Shift-Tab / Arrow / Escape, with Space to press the widget under the keyboard cursor and Enter to open chat. Every non-EditBox widget is reachable.
• Numbered-key hotkeys: key N, or Alt+N, picks the Nth editor tab the tab strip shows, for any N from 1 to the number of tabs it shows, in Simplified Mode too. A higher number goes on to the game.
• Resizable main window with a bottom-right drag grip.
• Spell, item, macro, and slash-command pickers (15 filter tabs, 16 from the condition builder) so long macro strings never need manual typing.
• Large-target density mode expands click rectangles to at least 44x44 px (WCAG 2.5.5 AAA) across action buttons, checkboxes, and tab strips.
• Cursor enhancement overlay: ring or crosshair, three sizes (1.0x / 1.5x / 2.0x). Colour ties to the active contrast palette.
• Simplified Mode: a preset for switch input, eye trackers with dwell-click, sip-and-puff, head tracking, and any AT driver that emits standard keyboard or mouse events through its driver. Collapses the sequence editor to its Steps and Keybind tabs plus a 3-button action column (Run sequence / Unlock editor / Close). A 500 ms post-acceptance delay (250..1500 ms slider) blocks accidental double-fires. Toggle from the Accessibility subpanel, via the one-click Accessibility Mode preset, or with /gems simplified. A single /reload after the first enable produces the cleanest layout; same-session toggles apply best-effort live.
• Undo / Redo across the sequence editor, step list, popup editor, and Repair window. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z in each.

Cognitive, new players, ESL

• First-run tour of the main window. It starts on its own the first time the main window shows. Skip ends it, /gems tour runs it again and /gems tour reset shows it at your next login.
• Help for every editor tab. The ? button on the tab bar opens a short, tooltip-anchored guide to the tab you're on.
• Plain-language tooltip text across validation messages and slash-command output.
• Sequence metadata fields (Author, Description, Help Text, Help Link) so sequence authors can embed guidance that travels with the export.

Audio

• Sound cues for validation errors, validation success, import-related info, and step advance. Four semantic cues routed through LibSharedMedia, so any sound installed by SharedMedia, WeakAuras, ElvUI, or similar is pickable per cue.
• Visual flash complement: an independent peer toggle to sound cues. Single fixed-position 80x80 frame at top-centre of the screen, shown for 0.6 s per cue. Per-cue colour: red error, green success, cyan info, gold step-complete. Deaf or hard-of-hearing players can have visual on with sound off, or both together. flickerSafe damps the flash to 0.3 alpha; reduceMotion damps to 0.6; default is 0.85.
• Channel selection (Master / SFX / Ambience / Dialog).
• Cue audition: each of the four cue rows in the Accessibility settings panel has a Play button so you can hear a sound before committing to it. Useful for picking by loudness when WeakAuras, BigWigs, or similar add-ons that register sounds via LibSharedMedia are installed.
• Opt-in, off by default.

General

• One-click Accessibility Mode preset. Turns on Simplified Mode, speech, reduce-motion and sound cues together, and sets the High contrast palette, UI scale 1.5x, large-target density and a ring cursor overlay at 1.5x. Snapshot-and-restore on toggle-off: your prior state returns, not the defaults.
• First-run CVar mirror. On the first login after installation, EMS reads Blizzard's accessibility CVars (colorblindMode, cameraBobbing, gamepad-detected) and pre-applies matching EMS settings. One-shot; press Re-detect accessibility settings in the Accessibility Mode section to run it again if your Blizzard settings change later.
• The Accessibility page under /gems settings groups the above in sections, in this order: Accessibility Guide, Accessibility Mode, Contrast preset, Colour vision, Sound cues, Display, Motion, Cursor overlay, Audio, Accessibility resources and feedback, Theming, Simplified Mode and Large interactive targets. Every setting is profile-scoped, so alts can differ.
• Theming: the Theming section (UI scale, Background opacity, Border opacity, Panel alpha and Overlay alpha, with Reset Theming to defaults) and a full per-element editor at /gems theme or on the page's Per-Element Theming tab. The full editor shows its own settings on an Overview tab and the elements on a Customise tab, and exposes 45 element classes across Panels, Overlays, Rows, Buttons, Text, Emphasis, and Global. Five user-named preset slots, plus Copy to All Profiles. Themes can be shared via chat link.
• Accessibility resources and feedback section. Four buttons link to AbleGamers APX, the Game Accessibility Guidelines, a Netflix documentary about accessible play in WoW (In memory of Ibelin), and the support Discord (Report an accessibility issue). WoW has no browser-launch API, so each button opens a static-popup edit box with the URL pre-selected for Ctrl+C copy.

Note on the theming taxonomy (for users looking at the 45-class tree)

The theming apply engine uses two patterns. Persistent UI (panels, singleton overlays, the focus ring) is frame-registered: EMS holds a reference to the widget and re-skins it directly when the theme changes. Transient and construction-time UI (rows, buttons, text FontStrings, emphasis state modifiers, the global addon font) is consumer-lookup: the widget reads its spec from the current theme at the moment it renders. Both patterns produce identical visible theming. Consumer-lookup classes are not "unbound" and are not reserved; they simply apply at a different point in the widget's lifecycle.

Five overlay classes are reserved in the taxonomy for features EMS has not shipped yet: overlay.toast.info, overlay.toast.error, overlay.modal.dim, overlay.tooltip, overlay.dragPreview. Their specs are in place so future work can bind them without a taxonomy change. One panel class, panel.profileMgr, is a Blizzard-owned surface (the AceDBOptions profile picker); EMS cannot currently reach a frame handle for it, so its theming is deferred until that handle is exposed.

Compatibility with other accessibility addons

What EMS cannot do

These are capabilities the addon API does not expose. They are structural limits, not deferred features.

• Native screen-reader integration (NVDA / JAWS / VoiceOver). WoW does not expose its UI to Windows UIAutomation, Apple Accessibility, or any assistive-technology framework. Screen readers see WoW as opaque pixels. EMS compensates with the TTS output and the chat-frame emitter above.
• Macro-pacing slowdown. Macro cadence is global-cooldown-bound. Slowing it below the GCD breaks the rotation.
• Voice input / speech-to-sequence. No WoW API for speech recognition. Users route through Dragon or Talon as keyboard bridges; EMS sees those bridges as regular keyboard input.
• Orientation and reflow (WCAG 1.3.4, 1.4.10). WoW is landscape-only with a fixed UI layout. The CSS-reflow concept does not map.
• Detection of specific assistive tech (switch controllers, eye trackers, individual screen-reader brands). Those devices emit regular keyboard or mouse events through their driver; WoW cannot tell them apart. EMS exposes what Blizzard CVars reveal (colorblindMode, reduced-motion proxies, gamepad-detected) and stops there.
• AceConfig select-widget value truncation at long-translated locales. EMS settings panels render via AceConfig-3.0; AceConfig owns truncation behaviour for select-widget value text. Long translated values may show ellipsis. Cosmetic only: the underlying setting still works. Filing an upstream AceConfig issue is the only fix path.
• Cross-addon popups while EMS Settings is open. While an EMS Settings subpanel is shown, ESCAPE is captured by EMS for keyboard navigation and dismissal of EMS's own dialogs. If another addon opens a popup over the EMS Settings panel, click that popup's Cancel or Close button directly. ESCAPE will not reach it until you close the EMS Settings subpanel. WoW's public StaticPopup_Hide API does not fire the dialog's OnCancel callback, so an EMS-side dismissal would skip the other addon's cleanup. Closing the EMS Settings subpanel restores ESCAPE to its normal routing.
• Per-Element Theming window layout details. /gems theme opens through AceConfigDialog:Open; AceConfig manages frame size, scrolling, and child widget layout. EMS does not have direct frame-level control over the modal's chrome. Reports of layout issues inside the modal should be reproducible against AceConfig + filed upstream.
• Focus ring into adjacent widget at Simplified Mode. At Simplified Mode the focus ring thickens from 2 px to 4 px for visibility, at an unchanged 2 px outset. When two focusable widgets sit close together, the ring of the focused widget may visually extend into the adjacent widget. Cosmetic only: the focus target is unchanged. Affects a small number of right-anchored chains.
• Accessibility Mode + UI scale 1.5 on displays shorter than about 960 px. Accessibility Mode sets UI scale (all EMS panels) to 1.5; at that scale, the main window's effective screen height (~960 px) exceeds the screen height of small displays. The frame remains usable but cannot drag-resize past the screen edge. When Accessibility Mode is turned on, EMS prints a warning in chat if the game's UI is shorter than the main window's smallest height, 640, at the scale the mode sets: 960 at 1.5. Mitigation: lower UI scale (all EMS panels). Simplified Mode, which Accessibility Mode turns on, stops it at 1.25, where the main window stands about 800 px tall. Turn Simplified Mode off to go lower, disable Accessibility Mode, or move to a display at least about 960 px tall.

Feedback

• Discord: https://griphub.dev/discord is the primary support channel. Accessibility reports go in the addon thread.
• In-game: /gems settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility resources and feedback opens the same four reference links bundled into the addon.
• External references we draw from: AbleGamers APX (design patterns), Game Accessibility Guidelines (post-acceptance delay, contrast, target size), and WCAG 2.2.

References

• ZeniMax ESO Accessibility Player Guide: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/63876
• AbleGamers APX Design Patterns: https://accessible.games/accessible-player-experiences/design-patterns/
• Game Accessibility Guidelines: https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/
• WCAG 2.2 Success Criteria: 2.3.1 (Three Flashes), 2.4.7 (Focus Visible), 2.5.5 (Target Size Enhanced)