Accessible Hyper-Twister Builder
A focused macOS spike for testing an accessible coaster-builder architecture inspired by OpenRCT2. The app builds one representative Hyper-Twister style coaster, renders it with SDL, and exposes a Swift/AppKit accessibility overlay for keyboard control, VoiceOver navigation, and spoken feedback.
- Status
- Research spike
- Date
- June 2026
- What it is
- This is a small macOS coaster-builder prototype that separates accessible input and output from the visual rendering layer. C++ owns the coaster builder state, placement rules, completion guidance, metrics, generated sounds, and SDL rendering. Swift/AppKit owns keyboard input, native accessibility fields, and spoken feedback.
- Why it was important
- The spike proves that a game-like builder can have a native accessibility surface without forcing gameplay input through SDL. Swift sends semantic commands into C++ through a bridge, and C++ sends semantic state back to Swift as JSON for VoiceOver inspection.
- Access angle
- It tests a path for blind-accessible construction interfaces where the visual game scene and the accessible control surface share one source of truth, instead of bolting descriptions onto pixels after the fact.
- Role
- Research, architecture, implementation, validation, demo capture and documentation.
- Tools used
- C++, Swift, AppKit, NSAccessibility, AVSpeechSynthesizer, SDL2, Codex and Claude Webapp.