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, and turn-based combat, 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.
• Character creation and the in-game UI (windows, menus, settings).
• Exploration: an always-on tile cursor you move around the world, a categorized scanner of everything in the area, wall tones and an object sonar, room and area awareness, and move-to orders.
• Dialogue, book events, tutorial popups, and the in-game log / character barks.
• Turn-based combat and targeting, with per-turn status readouts, cover/vantage checks from a tile, and pre-combat deployment.
• 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.

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 / nvdaControllerClient64.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. The essentials:

Key	Action
Ctrl+Shift+A	Toggle focus mode
Arrow keys	Navigate / adjust the focused control; move the tile cursor while exploring
Tab / Shift+Tab	Move between regions / panels
Enter	Primary action (activate; interact at the cursor)
Backspace	Secondary action (e.g. move the party to the cursor)
Escape	Back / close; on the bare HUD, open the game menu
Space / F1	Read the focused item's tooltip
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)
PageUp / PageDown	Scanner: previous / next item
Ctrl+PageUp / PageDown	Scanner: previous / next category
, / . / N / M / V	Cycle party / enemies / neutrals / objects / room exits (hold Shift to go back)
I	Interact with the scanner selection (or target an ability at it)
Home or /	Move the tile cursor to the scanner selection
C	Recenter the cursor on the party
X	Where am I (area, room, whether the spot is unexplored)
P	Read the party
U	Battlefield summary (counts, reach, threat)
' / Y	Inspect the cursor's occupant / the scanner selection
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
L	Open the message-log review
Semicolon	Cover / vantage from the cursor tile (combat)
B	Start the battle during deployment
Ctrl+F1 / Ctrl+F2	Cycle wall tones / sonar (off → when moving → continuous)
F12	Speech self-test (is my speech alive?)
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+I / Ctrl+J / Ctrl+L	Character sheet / inventory / journal / encyclopedia

The game's own service-window shortcuts (the bare letters C, I, J, M, L, and so on) are moved to Ctrl+letter so the bare letters are free for exploration; the game's on-screen hints update to match.

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 (everything, enemies, allies, objects, hazards, points of interest, and so on). Press I to interact with the current scanner selection — including targeting an ability at it — 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 ship off by default.

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

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: not everything in the game is accessible yet, and some screens are partial. Keys and behaviour may change between builds.
• Space / starship combat accessibility is planned as its own effort and isn't fully covered yet.
• 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. With the .NET SDK and the 4.8.1 targeting pack:

dotnet build RTAccess.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 + nvdaControllerClient64.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. 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 RTAccess.csproj -t:Compile -p:Configuration=Debug -p:SolutionDir=<repo-root>\

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), the NVDA Controller Client, and NAudio, each redistributed under its own license.

License

RTAccess is released under the MIT License — see LICENSE. The bundled prism.dll, nvdaControllerClient64.dll, and NAudio.dll are third-party components, redistributed under their own respective licenses.