Kingdoms and Castles Accessibility Mod

Accessibility mod for Kingdoms and Castles focused on screen-reader support, spoken menu navigation, and keyboard-driven gameplay navigation.

What It Does

The mod adds spoken feedback for:

• game load and save-load events
• main menu and settings navigation
• gameplay map navigation
• building placement and build menu navigation
• gameplay panel access such as island info, worker/job views, and related UI
• island summaries, keep-relative navigation, resource announcements, and other accessibility-oriented helpers

Speech output is provided through Tolk, with direct NVDA fallback handling when needed.

Requirements

• Windows version of Kingdoms and Castles
• a working screen reader such as NVDA
• the game's mod loading system enabled through the normal mods folder

Install

Build the project or run the stage script, then copy the staged mod/kc-accessibility/ folder into the game's mods directory so the final structure is:

KingdomsAndCastles_Data/
  mods/
    kc-accessibility/
      info.json
      ScreenReaderAccessibilityBehaviour.cs
      ScreenReaderLoadMod.cs
      keybindings.json
      Tolk.dll
      nvdaControllerClient64.dll
      ...

This mod is packaged as source files plus metadata and native speech DLLs, not as a single mod DLL. The native speech DLLs must remain beside the mod files.

Build

Build the project from the repository root:

msbuild src\kc-accessibility\kc-accessibility.csproj /t:Build /p:Configuration=Debug

The post-build step stages the mod into mod/kc-accessibility/.

To package the staged mod into a distributable zip, use:

cmd /c scripts\package-mod.cmd

That creates dist/kc-accessibility.zip.

Deploy

Deploy the staged mod with:

cmd /c scripts\deploy-mod-to-game.cmd

Releases

GitHub Actions builds and releases the mod on Windows when you push a tag that starts with v, for example:

git tag v1.0.0
git push origin v1.0.0

The workflow:

• builds src\kc-accessibility\kc-accessibility.csproj in Release
• stages mod/kc-accessibility/
• zips that staged mod folder
• publishes the zip as a GitHub release asset

Repository Layout

• src/kc-accessibility/ mod source
• lib/ required game and native dependencies
• scripts/ stage and deploy helpers
• doc/ public documentation
• local/ ignored local-only research and notes

Key Documentation

• Controls Spec
• Architecture
• Manual Regression Checklist

Logging

The mod writes explicit runtime logs intended to support manual accessibility verification. When testing changes, check:

• the mod-specific output.txt
• the game's general mods log

Keep logging stable and meaningful. Accessibility behavior in this project is verified primarily through build success plus in-game testing and log review.

Development Notes

• mod/ is generated output and should not be edited manually
• deployed game files should be updated via the deploy script, not by hand
• local-only investigation material belongs under local/, not in tracked source