Roguelikes is a genre of games built around a premise of making highly replayable, yet varied games based on procedural generation, very often randomization as core systems that form the whole concept of roguelikes essentially. Because of such foundations, this particular genre of games is known for it's pretty high difficulty, relative complexity along with randomness which force players to use their wits, different tactics based on different factors that all vary per playthrough, it is not simply descriptions changing. These factors are: mobs encountered, equipment found, skills or spells that character has, layout of a current map, NPCs or allies nearby, items with unique or unknown abilities, a lot of these factors exist, all of them in game can vary greatly
Roguelikes can be of any of existing types of games in terms of interface implementation. They can be: audio games, text games, 2d games, 3d games. The oldest, most famous, difficult, complex, very huge in terms of content roguelike roleplaying games, which are also considered to be made accidentally accessible, are 2d ASCII roguelikes. These games can be easily played on Windows, Mac or Linux consoles, because consoles output is also fully accessible with screen readers. They are called ASCII roguelikes because each object on the screen of these games is represented by one of symbols used in American Standard Code for Information Interchange, character encoding standard
What are the main features of interface in 2d ASCII roguelikes? These roguelikes combine text output in-game console, positioned somewhere on the screen with descriptions, in-game messages, at the same time they also use a grid-based interface using symbols as tiles, similar to a chessboard. Symbols are used to form whole picture of a world, map, level with symbols representing walls, floors, items, objects, NPCs, creatures, main character, similar to tiles on a chessboard, they represent everything in these games. Why are symbols used? Problem is that initially this chessboard is blank, it has space for tiles, but no actual tiles on it. Without tiles, neither rules apply to chess nor figures can exist. Just like in chess, without tiles, without these symbols game interface is simply blank. The most simple explanation of representation of interface of these games is playing a game on a grid like chess. One can only move and game can only register movements of objects in four directions: front, backwards, left, right
How are 2d ASCII roguelikes accessible? You might be under false impression that these games can only be played by reading each symbol with a screen reader, at the same time memorizing what each of them means to form a clear picture like slash, slash, slash, bracket, bracket, bracket. No, that would be incredibly tedious and difficult to play like this, this way of playing is not advised at all by most of players. Then how to actually play these games in a fun way with screen readers? Remember what I've said about these games combining text output in-game console with a grid-based interface? This creates a very good opportunity to combine these two interfaces to be able to make a mental map of a grid to know where walls, floors, monsters, items are located relative to main character's position via somehow reading what each tile on this grid represents
How can one read what each tile on a grid represents to be able to make a mental map relative to main character's position? 2d ASCII roguelikes are known to have dozens of commands, which can be edited in keybindings settings. So the most important commands for accessibility, that essentially answer this question, are found in majority of 2d ASCII roguelikes, these are: l or x for look around, also ; for far look, also / for whatis commands. All of these commands do the same thing mostly. These commands allow players to just move cursor around main character using arrow keys, when player presses enter or exits look screen, cursor goes back to position of main character. If players use these look or whatis commands along with e or space for examine commands, they will be able to get positions of other objects relative to their main character via moving cursor with arrow keys, at the same time reading in-game console text output, which displays in text, what this object that cursor points at is. Additionally, players are also able to read detailed descriptions of each object on each tile that cursor points at via using examine commands
How to download, play these 2d ASCII roguelikes? These games can be downloaded from websites on which they are hosted. Some are hosted on official developers websites, some of them are hosted on GitHub, GitHub is an open source system to publish files along with source code of games. If you are on Windows, you need to download console or ASCII versions of these games then play it through Windows console, same is true for Mac or Linux versions. However one game can only be played on Linux console so it requires one to have Linux installed on their computer or using a virtual machine via programs Virtual Box or VMware
List of roguelikes which are either known to be playable, accessible or have accessibility features, you can find them all via searching for them online or asking about them if you have not found their links:
1) Nethack along with it's variants like SLASHEM, also Unnethack, genre is dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. It is moderately accessible, it has additional accessibility features made by developers along with a guide on how to turn these features on. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
2) Brogue along with it's accessible variant called Broguespeak, genre is dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. Broguespeak has a lot of accessibility features. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
3) ADOM, genre is open world dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. It is moderately accessible. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
4) Angband, genre is dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. It is moderately accessible. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
5) Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, genre is dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. It has a lot of accessibility features with developers actively working on improving accessibility. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
6) Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead along with it's fork Cataclysm Bright Nights, genre is open world post-apocalyptic zombie survival roleplaying roguelike. Developers slowly are working on improving accessibility. Available only on Linux consoles
7) Shadow of The Wyrm, genre is open world dungeon crawling roleplaying roguelike. It is a pretty new roguelike game. Developer also continues to update it, it is described on developer's website as screen reader accessible, so this game also has additional accessibility features exactly for screen readers players. Available on Windows, Mac, Linux consoles
Hope you like this guide. Visually impaired and blind players will always be very significant in terms of their obvious importance in communities of players of audiogames, text roleplaying games, online text games, MUDs, accessible browser games, but any game that has lots of text output can be made accessible, including huge, complex games such as 2d ASCII roguelikes. It is important to know this to have hope in future accessibility for all players hopefully