I would definitely suggest reading this report, I participated in the research for it.
http://accessibility.iftechfoundation.org/

Also, I'll add you on Discord now, I'm "superfreq2"

Hi, huge parser IF fan here.

> First and foremost, what makes an IF game enjoyable to you?
The obvious ones would be good writing and interesting puzzles. I also like the feel of freedom you get with a parser-based game; it's illusory, but if the map/world is big enough, I can convince myself I have a lot of freedom.

> What about puzzles, especially "visual" puzzles?

Don't think there would be an issue here, as long as the player has all the needed information (i.e. don't have certain text appear in a different color/font if it's critical)

> What screen readers/scrapers do you use so I can look to be compliant?

NVDA under Windows. Since I mostly play Inform and other totally text-based games, I also sometimes connect a Raspberry Pi (running Linux, obviously) to my braille display and use brltty to play games that way lol. Obviously that would not work unless you used one of those languages where there's a CLI interpreter.

> Would you play an IF game where the screen reading was built-in?

Nah, would rather not. I recently played a game that did this and it just felt so clunky I didn't finish and have no interest in doing so. And I paid for it.

Not blind here, but I love IF.
Under Windows you have Winfrotz with the TTS addon, on
Linux setting up Yasr with frotz is not difficult.

On recommended games, I suggest you
Anchorhead, albeit "fear of the dark" won't apply to
you, but the environment is creepy enough.
Spider and Web has "linking stuff" puzzless,
but nothing beyond plug male A to female B.
It's an spy/tech based game, after all.
Slowch over Bedlam has an amazing adventure
but the "retrocomputer" spits out the message
in a 6x6 letter based matrix, albeit it can be
read with patience, as it's short enough.

Hey,

I have to second the report /u/Superfreq2 linked, I was one of the committee members who helped put it together. I have recently begun getting back into IF myself, and am definitely curious to see interesting developments in the genre.

Regarding visual puzzles, I'd be careful about assuming knowledge on the part of the player, just because blindness is such a wide spectrum and it's possible to exclude people unintentionally. This is addressed in the report.

Concerning screen readers, one reason that most people probably prefer their own speech system is that they can set the rate, voice, pitch etc. to taste. It is much harder to allow this kind of customization with built-in solutions, and is effort that would be better spent on building the game.

I hope this is helpful.

I'm fine with visual puzzles that require visual knowledge to solve, i.e. a colour of something.

I'd want my own screen reader or braille display though.