Revisiting Dungeons & Dragons in 2026
In 2019, I began playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for the first time. A few months after I started, I included an article here on the game and its accessibility. Over the past 7 years, I took part in a campaign that spanned 6 full years, running from levels 1 through the cap of 20, and I currently play in 3 different D&D campaigns. For this article, I'll be revisiting the topic of D&D, explaining how I've been playing the game over the past 7 years, what I find helpful, what resources still exist and how they've changed, as well as discussing the hobby of tabletop role-playing in general.
If you're not familiar with the term, a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) is a game in which players take on the roles of characters and embody their characters in a rules-bound narrative. Generally, 1 person takes the role of game master, Dungeon Master in the case of D&D, storyteller, referee, etc., who constructs the narrative world for the players, explains to them their surroundings and the reactions of those around them, and allows them to make decisions for their characters. Compared to a traditional video game, a TTRPG allows players to do nearly anything since the game is being controlled by an actual person. This can allow for exciting collaborative storytelling and immersion.
D&D is considered the forerunner of modern TTRPGs. Released in 1974, D&D allows you to take on the role of an individual in a fantasy world, primarily in the role of an adventurer or warrior of some kind. Though D&D is probably the most prominent TTRPG and the one most recognizable to those outside the hobby, there are many, many, many other TTRPGs in many genres. It could be anything from pirates in a space opera setting to bears trying to steal honey. The options are endless. If you'd like more information on the mechanics and how these games function, I definitely recommend checking out my original article on the subject in the September 2019 issue of AccessWorld.
Note that for D&D sourcebooks, the 2019 article is referring to the 5th edition of D&D, the 2014 edition. In 2024, Wizards of the Coast released an update of the 5th edition rules colloquially known as D&D 5.5, a (mostly) backwards-compatible modern edition of the 5e ruleset. This is important as, for example, the National Library Service accessible D&D sourcebooks are for the 2014 edition. That being said, there's nothing to say you can't still use these. Many people play older editions of D&D. The release of new editions doesn't invalidate the older ones. It all depends on what you and your group would like to play. My groups have transitioned to 5.5 primarily, and the change has been pretty seamless.
D&D Beyond is still a fantastic resource for accessing D&D rules and sourcebooks. The 2014 rules are still available for free, but you can also now access the basic rules for 2024, as well as all the new sourcebooks and individual elements of the game, such as character classes, species, spells, etc. Since 2019, my groups eventually moved to building our characters through the D&D Beyond interface. In some ways, this makes characters easy to manage, as more aspects of play are automated by the digital sheet. When you're using a screen reader, this does result in a lot of jumping around in the interface, and some things aren't terribly well labeled, such as the checkboxes for marking which spells you've used and which you haven't. Another major issue I've encountered when building or updating characters is that any combo box in the interface does not allow you to navigate with the arrow keys once you've expanded it with a screen reader. I find that I have to use NVDA's object navigation to then manually go into the combo box and select an option. This does work, but is not ideal.
Overall, though, if you want to use D&D Beyond for accessing your D&D sources and managing your character sheet, it's quite accessible. It's particularly helpful for your Game Master/Dungeon Master, as you can add a character to a campaign and then the Dungeon Master can see the current version of the character sheet, allowing them to better create combat encounters, etc.
AI makes for an efficient way of building an easily readable character sheet. For 1 of my campaigns, I went through the character creation process, listed everything out to ChatGPT, and it built an HTML character sheet for me with proper, easy-to-navigate headings, tables, etc. When I needed to update the sheet, I would just give ChatGPT the new information, and it would update it and give me a new version. Not quite as automatic as using something like D&D Beyond, but you can build it to your preferences and make it efficient to navigate. A good old Word document works well too. I personally use it for things I switch often, such as my character's current items and currency, or for keeping track of rapidly changing conditions, e.g., if your character is paralyzed, frostbitten, etc.
Since the 2019 article, 1 major aspect of TTRPGs that I have used is the virtual tabletop platform Roll20. A virtual tabletop is a digital platform where you can play the game with online digital assets instead of physical ones. For example, oftentimes in a physical game, you'll have a map and miniature figures to help visualize the scene during combat. In a virtual tabletop platform, things like maps and characters are rendered digitally and can be moved about, labeled, etc. After COVID began, my group switched to Roll20 to continue our game once we couldn't meet in person.
From an accessibility standpoint, Roll20 works relatively well. It's possible to read handouts and other documents provided by your Dungeon Master, and it's possible to perform dice rolls and read the result. The biggest accessibility barrier is that the map seems to be completely inaccessible. I played with sighted players, so it was easy enough to tell people where I'd like to go and get visual descriptions of the environments we were in. If I was playing online remotely with an all-blind group, I would probably not use something like Roll20 and instead use something similar to the Avrae Discord bot, which allows you to roll dice in a Discord server. Discord itself is accessible and is a great way to play D&D remotely. It's what all my groups have used, using its voice chat feature.
When I have the opportunity to play D&D in person, I still use my DOTS RPG Braille dice I got back in 2019. They've held up great, and the company now has an official store where you can buy the dice instead of having to purchase them through a 3D print-on-demand service like Shapeways, as you used to.
One great resource that's expanded significantly since the 2019 article is the Knights of the Braille tabletop and D&D resource page. They have many resources on accessible design in tabletop gaming, as well as resources for accessible games outside of D&D, sources for accessible sourcebooks, a list of accessible dice makers, and so on. I definitely recommend checking it out if you're thinking about playing a TTRPG.
I've been very fortunate that I've had great groups who have described the environment, characters, etc., to me. But something I've personally found very helpful when playing, especially if you're using miniatures and maps for combat, is to get an overview of the battlefield on your turn. I try to keep up with how things have changed between 1 turn and the next, but if you have multiple players with many things happening, getting the refresh can be really helpful if you can't see the map. I've found there's not really been a need for very many adaptations to make the game accessible. If the DM shows a picture of a person, monster, or item, they either describe it to me or I simply ask. Since the game is primarily voice-based, so to speak, it's naturally very accessible with minor considerations.
As mentioned, Knights of the Braille has a list of multiple other TTRPGs, and there are potentially tens to hundreds of thousands on DriveThruRPG. The biggest caveat with DriveThruRPG, however, is that the PDFs aren't always terribly accessible, even if the text is readable. That's why I personally find D&D Beyond so valuable, since the sourcebooks are very easy to navigate and understand. As you might imagine, there are many, many tables (in the grid sense) involved in TTRPGs as a whole, and so, if those aren't made accessible, it can make things very difficult.
If you decide to run your own TTRPG, 1 way to improve accessibility in regard to what you need to keep track of, especially while managing combat, is to use games that do not use grid-based combat systems such as D&D. There is a whole genre of TTRPG systems called Powered by the Apocalypse games that are significantly more narrative-driven and use theater of the mind, a term meaning that grids and maps aren't generally used, but the environments and such are described to you and you simply keep track of things mentally.
If you're looking for the high-fantasy flavor of D&D but would prefer a non-grid-based combat system, I would highly, highly recommend 13th Age. It is a game that has a similar flavor to D&D and even involves some of the 4th-edition creators, if I'm not mistaken, but uses a zone-based theater-of-the-mind combat system. The PDFs from Pelgrane Press are fully accessible in my experience, and the 1st edition of the game is fully available for free in accessible HTML through the 13th Age System Resource Document, including classes, rules, magic items, monsters, and so on. It's definitely what I'll be running when I run a TTRPG campaign of my own.
TTRPGs, and D&D in particular, are some of my favorite hobbies, and I'm so thankful that when I began playing the game, it was at a time when it was more accessible than ever. That state has continued until now, where we have more accessible resources, Braille dice, and so on than ever before. If you've never tried a TTRPG, I definitely recommend giving it a try.
This is also simply my personal experience and the tools that I've used. If you play TTRPGs and have your own methods for making them accessible or have found ways that you find it very efficient to play them, we'd love to hear about it. If you'd like to share your experience, leave us a comment on our socials.