RTAccess

A screen-reader accessibility mod for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, for blind and visually-impaired players. It speaks the game's menus, character creation, dialogue, exploration, loot, turn-based combat, and the whole void-travel layer — the sector map, star systems, and voidship battles — and adds a custom keyboard layer over the game's UI, spatial audio for the world around you, and review "buffers" for inspecting characters in detail.

Status: pre-alpha. Under active development and not yet feature-complete — expect rough edges, gaps, and breaking changes. Bug reports are very welcome; that's what this stage is for.

This mod is a sibling of Wrath Access (the same kind of mod for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous) and reuses many of its patterns. It loads through Unity Mod Manager, which ships bundled with Rogue Trader — so there's nothing extra to install first.

What works

• Speech through your screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, etc.) via Prism, with a stopgap fallback voice if Prism isn't available.
• Custom keyboard navigation in mouse mode, with key-repeat matching your OS settings.
• Menus and first run: the main menu, the first-launch settings wizard, terms of use, credits, feedback, the DLC & Mods window, save / load, and the game's own settings. The mod's own settings live inside the game's Mods window, so you never have to touch Unity Mod Manager's overlay.
• Character creation, level-up, respec / retrain, and change appearance.
• Service windows: inventory and equipment, cargo, the character sheet, journal, the encyclopedia / codex, the local map, formation editor, vendors and trade, ship customization, colony management, and augmentations.
• Exploration: an always-on tile cursor you move around the world, a categorized scanner of everything in the area (including unexplored frontier and shootable scenery), wall tones and an object sonar, room classification with named exits, and move-to orders.
• Dialogue, book events, tutorial popups, and the in-game log / character barks.
• Turn-based combat and targeting: per-turn status readouts, the action bar led by availability, cover / vantage checks from a tile, hit odds and line-of-sight, hazard warnings on a path, a move preview you plant and then confirm, and pre-combat deployment.
• Void travel and space: the sector map with warp-route creation and upgrades, star-system maps, planetary exploration, anomalies and expeditions, and voidship combat — movement with inertia, weapon arcs, shields, bridge posts, and the end-of-battle popup.
• Review buffers (Alt+arrows) for reading a unit's details line by line — name, HP, defenses, and every buff / debuff, with the game's own tooltip detail one key away.
• RT-specific readouts: momentum, the veil / psychic-phenomena pressure, profit factor, and turn / objective timers.

The mod follows the game's language setting; English (enGB) is included and is the complete string set — other languages can be dropped in as a folder.

Settings

RTAccess has its own settings, and they are reached through the game's own menus rather than Unity Mod Manager's inaccessible on-screen overlay: open DLC & Mods from the main menu, find the RTAccess row in the mods list, and activate its Settings action. Three categories:

• Exploration — the camera follow, the sonar and wall tones (mode, volume, cadence, range), the fog-boundary cue, and room-change announcements.
• Audio — master volume and the stereo-realism switches.
• Announcements — how much is spoken, and per-element overrides.

Settings are stored separately from the mod itself, so updating never resets them.

Requirements

• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader on Windows (Steam).
• A screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, ...) or the built-in fallback voice.

Install and update

Rogue Trader comes with Unity Mod Manager built in, so there's no separate loader to install and no manager overlay to open — you manage mods from the game's own DLC & Mods menu. Close the game first, then:

1. Get the RTAccess build — either a release zip, or one you build yourself (see Building). It is a folder named RTAccess containing RTAccess.dll, Info.json, the assets/ folder, and the bundled prism.dll.
2. Extract the RTAccess folder into the game's mod folder: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Owlcat Games\Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader\UnityModManager\ (so you end up with …\UnityModManager\RTAccess\RTAccess.dll).
3. Start the game. New mods are enabled by default, so RTAccess is active on the next launch — you don't have to turn anything on. If you ever need to, the toggle is in the main menu under DLC & Mods.

To update, close the game and replace the RTAccess folder with the newer build. Your RTAccess settings are stored separately, so updating never resets them.

Enabling without sight (the bootstrap problem)

The mod has to be enabled before it can make the menus speak, so the first-run steps above are designed to need no on-screen navigation: dropping the folder in is enough, because Unity Mod Manager turns newly-added mods on by default.

If RTAccess ever ends up disabled (for example someone toggled it off, or a tester left it off), you can turn it back on entirely from a text editor, no menus required. Close the game and open:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Owlcat Games\Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader\UnityModManager\Params.xml

Find the line for RTAccess inside <ModParams> and set Enabled to true:

<ModParams>
  <Mod Id="RTAccess" Enabled="true" />
</ModParams>

Save the file and start the game. (Deleting that whole <Mod Id="RTAccess" ... /> line works too — UMM re-adds it enabled on the next launch.)

Keys

Press Ctrl+Shift+A to toggle accessibility focus mode.

Anywhere

Key	Action
Ctrl+Shift+A	Toggle focus mode
Alt+Left / Right	Pick a review buffer
Alt+Up / Down	Read the current buffer's lines
Alt+T	Read the current buffer line's detail (a buff's description / sources)
L	Message-log review (press again to close)
F12	Speech self-test (is my speech alive?)

Menus and windows

Key	Action
Arrow keys	Navigate / adjust the focused control
Tab / Shift+Tab	Move between panels
Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down	Jump between the regions of a long sheet
Home / End	First / last item
Enter	Activate
Shift+Enter / Ctrl+Enter	Split a stack / split it in half (inventory)
Backspace	Secondary action
Space / F1	Read the focused item's tooltip
Escape	Back / close; on the bare HUD, open the game menu
Ctrl+P	Re-announce the current character-creation phase

Space is shared: it reads the tooltip, unless the open window claims it for the action the game puts there — collecting everything in a loot window, or starting the battle during deployment. F1 always reads the tooltip, whatever is open.

Exploring

Key	Action
Arrow keys	Move the tile cursor
Shift+arrows	Move the cursor even when a panel would take the arrows
Enter	Interact at the cursor
Backspace	Move the party to the cursor (in combat: plant the move, then press again to commit)
C	Recenter the cursor on the party
Delete	Re-announce the cursor tile
X	Where am I (area, room, whether the spot is unexplored)
Home or /	Move the tile cursor to the scanner selection

The scanner

Key	Action
PageUp / PageDown	Previous / next item
Ctrl+PageUp / PageDown	Previous / next category
, / . / N / M / V	Cycle party / enemies / neutrals / objects / room exits (hold Shift to go back)
O	Re-announce the current selection
I	Interact with the selection (or target an ability at it)
' / Y	Inspect the cursor's occupant / the scanner selection
P	Read the party
U	Battlefield summary (counts, reach, threat)

Party and combat

Key	Action
Ctrl+A	Select the whole party
Alt+1 … Alt+6	Select a single party member
Shift+A / Shift+D	Select the previous / next party member
H / G	Hold position / stop
R	Status readout (whose turn, actions and movement left)
K	RT gauges — momentum, veil, profit factor, timers, objectives
Z	This turn's movement options (how far on foot; the facing fan for a voidship)
Semicolon	Cover / vantage from the cursor tile
Space	Start the battle during deployment

Audio

Key	Action
Ctrl+F1	Cycle wall tones (off → when moving → continuous)
Ctrl+F2	Cycle the sonar (off → when moving → continuous)

Sector map only

Key	Action
M / Shift+M	Step through the warp links leading off the anchor system
/	Re-anchor the walk on the selected system
C	Back to the system you're currently in

Formation editor only (while the placement field is focused)

Key	Action
W / A / S / D	Step the formation cursor (hold Shift to glide)
, / Shift+,	Review the next / previous member
/	Move the cursor to the reviewed member
C	Recentre the cursor
Alt+1 … Alt+6	Grab the Nth member of the list

The game's own keys, relocated

The game's bare-letter shortcuts are moved to Ctrl+letter so the bare letters are free for exploration; the game's on-screen hints update to match.

Key	What it does
Ctrl+C	Character sheet
Ctrl+I	Inventory
Ctrl+J	Journal
Ctrl+M	Local map
Ctrl+L	Encyclopedia
Ctrl+N	Formation
Ctrl+V	Ship customization
Ctrl+Y	Colony management
Ctrl+B	Cargo management
Ctrl+U	Augmentations
Ctrl+X	Swap weapon set (the game gives no audio for this one yet)

Getting started

Launch the game with the mod enabled. Only PC (mouse mode) is supported; controller mode is not.

The in-game UI

Navigation works as you'd expect. Use the arrow keys to move within the current panel and Tab / Shift+Tab to move between panels. Enter is your primary action (usually a left-click); Backspace is the secondary action. Space or F1 reads the focused element's tooltip. Escape backs out of a window or dialogue; on the bare exploration HUD, with nothing focused, it opens the game's own menu instead.

The cursor and the scanner

Rogue Trader is a mouse-driven CRPG. Instead of emulating a 2-D mouse pointer, the mod gives you a tile cursor you move around the world with the arrow keys (Shift+arrows always move the cursor even when a panel would otherwise take the arrows). Sounds you hear are placed relative to this cursor — treat it as an audio camera. Press Enter to interact with whatever is at the cursor, Backspace to send your selected party there, and C to recenter the cursor on the party leader.

Alongside it is the scanner: a categorized, distance-sorted browse of everything in the area. Use PageUp / PageDown to step through items and Ctrl+PageUp / PageDown to switch category — party, enemies, neutrals, containers, corpses, doors, area exits, points of interest, search points, traps, mechanisms, destructible scenery, hazards, buff zones, and unexplored space (the fog edges where exploration can still continue). Press I to interact with the current scanner selection — including targeting an ability at it, or shooting a destructible to open a path — O to hear the selection again, and Home or / to jump the tile cursor to it.

You can also cycle quickly through nearby things: . enemies, , party, N neutrals, M interactable objects, V the current room's exits (hold Shift on any of these to go backwards). Press X for "where am I" (area, the room you're in, and whether the spot is still unexplored), U for a battlefield summary, and ' / Y to inspect the cursor's occupant or the scanner selection in full.

Review buffers

Buffers let you read a character's details line by line without leaving what you're doing. Use Alt+Left / Right to switch buffer and Alt+Up / Down to move through its lines — name, hit points, defenses, then every buff and debuff. On a buff line, Alt+T opens the game's own tooltip for it (the full description, and which sources are overriding it when a bonus doesn't stack).

Spatial audio

Think of the tile cursor as an audio camera. Wall tones play a tone for each nearby wall in the four cardinal directions, louder as a wall gets closer — cycle them with Ctrl+F1. The sonar periodically pings nearby things, each with a sound for its type, placed by distance and direction — cycle it with Ctrl+F2. Both cycle off → when moving → continuous, and both are on ("when moving") by default: they play while you move and fall silent when you stop. A short tone also marks the moment the cursor crosses the edge of what your party can currently see, and landing on a scanner item pings it where it stands.

Everything above is tunable in the mod's settings (see Settings) — a master volume, the sonar's range and cadence, wall-tone volume and tone set, and the stereo-realism switches. If the soundscape is too much, set both to Off there or with the keys above.

Party, orientation, and combat

Press Ctrl+A to select the whole party or Alt+1–Alt+6 for a single member; Shift+A / Shift+D step through members. H holds position and G stops. P reads the party and K reads the RT-specific gauges — momentum, the veil, profit factor, and any turn or objective timers.

In turn-based combat you'll hear whose turn it is; press R at any time for a status readout (actions and movement remaining) and Z for how far the acting unit can move this turn. Move the cursor onto a tile and press Semicolon to hear the cover, range, and threat the acting unit would have from there before committing.

Moving in combat is a two-step preview, the same one a sighted player gets. The first Backspace on a tile plants the move — you hear the distance, what it costs, and whether the path provokes — and every readout from then on answers from that planned tile, so you can cycle enemies and check cover before deciding. A second Backspace on the same tile commits it; Escape cancels. The plan doesn't expire, so take as long as you like between the two presses.

During pre-combat deployment, place characters with the cursor and press Space to start the battle.

Space, the sector map, and voidship combat

Warp travel and the void layer are covered too. The sector map is navigated as a graph rather than a picture: M / Shift+M walk the warp links leading off the anchor system, / re-anchors the walk on whatever you've selected, and C returns you to where you actually are. Routes can be created and upgraded from the same screen. Star-system maps, planetary exploration, anomalies, expeditions, and colony management each have their own accessible window.

Voidship battles work like ground combat with a ship's physics on top: movement carries inertia, so Z reads the fan of end positions grouped by the facing you'd arrive at, and the cursor tells you whether a tile is reachable this turn. Weapons, abilities, and bridge posts are separate panels reached with Tab, enemy readouts name the firing arc you'd be in, and the end-of-battle popup is navigable.

Dialogue, the log, and tutorials

Conversations are presented as a transcript you can read through — what's been said, the current line, and your answer choices (including skill-check options). Storybook / book events work the same way, and speech never interrupts itself so lines don't cut each other off. Ambient character lines (barks) and narrative log messages are spoken as they happen; press L to open the log review and read past messages by channel. Tutorial popups are read out as they appear.

Notes and limitations

• Pre-alpha: some screens are partial, and keys and behaviour may change between builds. Much of the newest coverage is built from the game's own code and compile-verified but not yet walked through in a real playthrough — story- and campaign-gated windows especially.
• Co-op / multiplayer (the lobby and role assignment) is not covered — it's a subsystem in its own right and is a deliberate open decision rather than an oversight. The same goes for the game's built-in bug-report window.
• Report bugs with as much detail as you can — where you were, what you pressed, and what you heard versus what you expected.

Building (developers)

The mod targets net481 (.NET Framework 4.8.1) and builds against the game's own assemblies. Clone with submodules — the native speech library is built from source, not committed:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/<owner>/WH40KRTAccess.git
# already cloned? git submodule update --init third_party/prism

Then, with the .NET SDK and the 4.8.1 targeting pack:

dotnet build Access.slnx -c Debug

A Debug build compiles RTAccess.dll and the Deploy target copies the whole mod folder (dll + Info.json + manifest + assets/ + prism.dll + Mono.CSharp.dll + NAudio.dll) into the UMM mods folder and zips it — the game must be closed or the copy fails on the locked DLL.

prism.dll is compiled from the third_party/prism submodule as part of the build. That needs CMake 3.24+ and Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload (the Windows SDK's midl.exe generates Prism's NVDA RPC stubs). The step short-circuits in about 0.15s once built, and only re-runs when the submodule moves; just prism --force rebuilds on demand. On a machine without the C++ toolchain, set RTACCESS_SKIP_PRISM=1 (or -p:SkipPrismBuild=true) — a Debug build then warns and falls back to the SAPI stopgap voice, while a Release build refuses to produce a speechless zip.

dotnet build -c Release produces the player build (the dev harness is compiled out). To compile without touching the deployed DLL while the game is running:

dotnet msbuild src/RTAccess/RTAccess.csproj -t:Compile -p:Configuration=Debug

scripts/dev-game.ps1 (and the /dev-game workflow) wrap the close → build → launch → verify cycle. See CLAUDE.md for the full architecture, game facts, and conventions.

Credits

• Wrath Access — the sibling Pathfinder mod and the authoritative prior art for nearly every subsystem here.
• SpeechMod (Osmodium, MIT) — the prior-art Rogue Trader TTS mod the hook map was built from.
• Bundled third-party components: Prism (prism.dll, screen-reader speech) and NAudio, each redistributed under its own license.

License

RTAccess is released under the MIT License — see LICENSE. The bundled prism.dll and NAudio.dll are third-party components, redistributed under their own respective licenses.