Welcome to the third feature update of Pivot of Hearts! It includes something we have been looking forward to for a while now: accessibility improvements!

Reminder that Pivot of Hearts is 20% off right now! What better moment to give Wen's story a chance now that it has become even more accessible?

Screen reader / text-to-speech support

While Ren'Py does come with screen reader support out of the box, its default settings added to our heavily customized interface and features made it very lacking. With the help of specialized consultants, including vision-impaired people, we made several changes to help share Wen's story without relying only on reading and visually navigating the game's UI.

The first change is that the controls for the screen reader are rather obscure in the Ren'Py, so we added dedicated menus and a starting prompt so that vision-impaired people do not have to find that menu before being able to properly interact with the game:

As you can see, the starting prompt can be easily disable for those who do not need it. Besides the menu, there were many parts of the UI that simply did not work well with the default behavior of Ren'Py's screen reader. It was very inconsistent, with some elements never being described while other were described every time you pressed any button, causing a very tiring experience. We had to check screen by screen, button by button, fixing all the alt texts and interaction descriptions over the entire game. Scrolls bars, in particular, were very hard to handle because their keyboard and gamepad controls were already somewhat clunky, so we worked on those with extra care!

As for the story and gameplay, the key missing aspect in Ren'Py's out-of-the-box setup is that images, transitions and other UI call-outs were not being described, among several other minor things, such as the suits and footnotes not being described inside the dialogue either. Again, we combed through the whole the over-100k-word script of Pivot of Hearts to adjust and adapt the integration with the screen reader to make sure everyone would have the same experience, or as close as we could possibly make it. At the same time, to avoid being repetitive — like fully describing a character every time they showed up — we made it so a full description kicks in only the first time we see something, but you can always hear again the description of elements in the scene using the new "Describe" menu:

Other changes

Part of improving the UI for screen reader support involved making it work better with keyboards and gamepads, though we still have some work to do on that front (like full support for Steam Input). We also optimized some parts of the game, especially the gallery — where our beautiful high-quality art was taking sometimes taking a while to load.

Full changelog

Added

• On-demand audiodescription of in-game scenes
• Prompt for enabling screen reader at game start-up (can be disabled)
• Automatic inplace screen reader support for footnotes
• Audiodescription for characters, BGs, and CGs
• Audiodescription of phone chat dialogue and stickers
• Audiodescription of card animations and love points
• Audiodescription of chapter openings and endings
• Audiodescription of date changes
• Accessibility menu with screen reader voice controls

Changed

• Quick menu buttons to highlight activation differentlty from hovering
• Sliders to provide audiovisual feedback when interacted with
• Scrollbars to be no longer selectable via keyboard or gamepad
• All scrollbars to scroll automatically in screen reader mode
• Screen reading of narrator lines to state "Narrator" explicitly
• Screen reader UI navigation overhauled for improved accessibility
• Pause menu button position to first in drop-down menu
• BG thumbnails in gallery optimized for reduced build size

Removed

• Gamepad calibration since it caused more trouble than it is worth

Fixed

• A crash due to no screen reader support on Linux (including SteamDeck)
• A missing translation note
• A crash in older saves with a corner case involving new menu content
• Many typos, gramatical errors, etc.