✨ Mod Refresh: TS4 Access
Screen Reader is now TS4 Access! This expanded release is a joint project with LeonianUniverse, bringing more accessibility features to The Sims 4.
TS4 Access adds narration, keyboard navigation, and accessible gameplay menus to The Sims 4, providing support for blind and visually impaired players that is not available in an unmodded game.
The mod reads menus, panels, dialogs, pie menus, tooltips, and notifications aloud, and can also announce what your Sim is doing. You can find Sims and objects, open their interactions, and furnish your home using the keyboard!
Narration begins at the main menu, with keyboard support for loading saves, choosing a home, and selecting a season if you have Seasons installed. Live Mode and object placement in Build Mode are also supported. A few parts of the game still require the mouse; please see the limitations below.
Accessibility Features
World Scanner: Browse Sims and objects by category, hear their names and locations, and open their interactions. The scanner updates for your active Sim and filters out objects with no interactions.
Accessibility Menu: Check needs, mood, skills, career, inventory, relationships, and more. You can also open the phone, switch household Sims, change settings, and have the keyboard shortcuts read aloud.
Simplified Menus: Use the arrow keys to move through supported options one at a time, including phone actions and gameplay dialogs for jobs, events, food, and drinks. This is enabled by default.
Travel & Moving: Choose travel destinations from lists of worlds and places. When choosing a home, hear whether a lot is occupied and whether your household can afford it.
Build Mode: Browse the catalog and place supported objects using a spoken lot cursor. Rotate placed objects, undo a placement, or sell an object at the cursor.
Speech & Screen Readers
You do not need to have a screen reader installed to use the mod. The mod can use a Windows text-to-speech voice instead. Microsoft Zira is selected by default, but the voice can be changed in Settings.
To use your own screen reader, such as NVDA or JAWS, or a braille display, install the free Speech Pack alongside the mod. Microsoft Narrator is not supported.
⚠️ Windows only: TS4 Access does not currently support macOS.
Installation & Getting Started
Install the mod directly inside Mods\TS4_Access, and download the TS4 Access Helper.
Once before your first play session and once after every monthly game patch, run the TS4 Access Helper with The Sims 4 closed. Open TS4AccessHelper.exe, choose Enable Script Mods, and wait for confirmation before starting the game through Steam or the EA app. The tool checks and enables both Custom Content and Mods and Script Mods Allowed, so please make this part of your setup!
Game patches can turn mods off again. Check for a compatible TS4 Access release after a patch. If the game resets the settings on its first launch, close it, run the tool again, and restart.
These guides cover setup and controls in more detail:
Installation & Getting Started - Setup, the Speech Pack, the helper, and your first household.
Controls & Settings - Keyboard shortcuts, the scanner, menus, travel, and speech options.
Build Mode Guide - Placing, rotating, and selling objects.
In-game, press Ctrl + Alt + H to open the accessibility menu and choose Keyboard shortcuts for spoken help. The download also includes README.txt, CONTROLS.txt, and CHEATS.txt for offline reference.
Important Limitations
Not every part of the game is fully accessible with a keyboard.
Create a Sim: Most controls support keyboard navigation, but appearance and customization controls still require the mouse.
Build Mode: Walls, floors, roofs, rooms, stairs, pools, terrain, and paint still require the mouse. Objects that need a wall, ceiling, fence, water, or bare ground cannot currently be placed using the mod's cursor.
Maps: Some destinations still require the game's traditional maps. After selecting a lot, you may need to continue through the controls to reach Play or Confirm.
Compatibility
TS4 Access is Base Game compatible and supports all expansion packs. No expansion packs are required.
⚠️ This mod overrides several UI files to enable narration and keyboard navigation, so it may conflict with other mods that modify the user interface.
If you use weerbesu's UI Cheats Extension, install the matching compatibility add-on using my priority folder guide. Update the add-on alongside TS4 Access.
Feedback & Support
Join the Accessibility Discord server to ask questions, get mod support, and share feedback! We'd love to hear how TS4 Access is working for you.
If you run into an issue, please include the menu or object and the steps that led to it. This makes it much easier for us to reproduce and fix!
Useful Links
Carl's Sims 4 Guide - Guides to needs, skills, careers, and other gameplay systems.
The Sims Wiki - Information about the game's worlds, objects, Sims, and packs.
Download NVDA - A free screen reader for Windows that can be used with the Speech Pack.
Use the TS4 Access guides for the mod's controls; the gameplay resources above describe the unmodded game.
If you run into an issue, please include the menu or object and the steps that led to it. This makes it much easier for me to reproduce and fix!
TS4 Access is developed jointly by tyjokr and LeonianUniverse, building on our Screen Reader and a11yscan mods. The world scanner, lot cursor, object placement, and several keyboard ideas originated in LeonianUniverse's mod.
Thank you to everyone who has helped us test and shared feedback!
Comments (62)
Incredible! I had just assumed this was part of most games, now I realize its not. Thank you for taking the time to do what many AAA companies don't bother with apparently.
Hi I have a question. How do you navigate in restaurant menus. I don't know how to do that so I can't take my sisms out to eat
Just wondering, is it supposed to be a yellow box around things now? Like when you click on the Sim there’s a yellow box around more options? Is that supposed to happen? If so is there any way to get rid of it?
That’s for keyboard users. You can disable keyboard navigation in the settings.
The World Scanner sounds like such a game changer for accessible gameplay! 💛
You are a massive GOAT. Truly want to say thank you for all that you do for TS4 community.
Thank you! This project was a big undertaking. I’m glad it’s out for others to enjoy now.
Hello, it has always been my dream to play this game. I do have a question though, since the main menu doesn’t work with the mod,how do we even start if we can’t navigate the main menu and choose any of the options. Unfortunately it sounds like to me if we want to do anything in the game independently regarding the main menu, we have to have sided help, but unfortunately not everyone has sighted people around all of the time. I don’t mean this to sound disrespectful at all, but I want to know before I download this. How would I be able to play if I can’t even get through the main menu? Every time I’m going to want to play I’m going to have to go through the main menu.
We are working on an update that extends functionality to the main menu, as well as many other QOL additions.
I'm blind, thanks so much for this, it's sad that you had to make this, even Minecraft has screen reader support, and it's spaghetti code.
Of course! I will be updating the mod soon with even more features to make the experience even better for you.
Hi I have a suggestion, can you add wants to the screen reader? Make it w for wants like you did simology and aspirations?
Yes, coming in an update that's being worked on!
So I noticed something very interesting, and I fear I missing something. Dialogues once I answer the phone in the game cannot be read, and I cannot hit any of the buttons when the mod shows them. This also goes for self-discovery pop ups, as well as likes and dislikes. This also applies to the work chance card dialogues.
Oh also, I cannot access the inventory items with the mod for some reason, and was wondering if that was something I was missing and if the mod needed to be worked on to include that if not.
Hey, so I noticed something, and I was wondering if you could help me figure this out. As it stands right now, I cannot purchase books from the bookcase with the mod. I can use 4 and 6 to cycle through the books, but hitting numpad 5 doesn't do anything. Is there something really specific I'm missing?
When you're hovering over one of the books, try holding 6 to increase the amount, 4 to decrease the amount. You can use regular arrow keys to navigate as well.
Hi. First of all, I want to thank you for the mod. It was a dream play the sims 4. And after this magnificent thanks, I wold ask how can I start the game? I mean with the mod. E tryed to extract in the mods game it self, in the mods game in a exclusive folder with the libs it needs but I dont know how to runn the mod properly talking. Could you help? Dont know if I am doing something wrong. Or if I am avoiding something that is necessary to put it on
heres feedback make the ui fully accessible how other mods do it so the mouse isnt needed also each sim should have a moodlet over there head so make sure theres a way to hear this also time is important so t key or something should speek the time / date if you follow other mods they use a menu based system
lol good thing I checked the audiogame forum today. great stuff
hope this mod will continue to get updates and not be abandoned and right now the way to find things is not easy most blind/visualy impaired people dont use mouse so a scanner of such would help sadly this still needs alot of work
I plan to continue updating it, but the only way I can continue to make it more accessible is by receiving feedback and suggestions from users of the mod.
So I noticed that wants and fears don't read unless hovered over by the mouse, based on watching a low vision friend play. Is that supposed to be the case?
Yeah, the mod is primarily a screen reader with some support for keyboard navigation. The keyboard navigation needs more work for sure.
So update on the not being able to answer the phonecalls/test messages, The mod does show them, it's just that I don't have the time to answer them because of the slight lag with the mod as you're cycling the interface.
Noted. I'll have to see if there's a way to keep them open longer or pull focus to them.
Hello there this is incredibly awesome! I definitely will try this out! How do we navigate the main menu and character creation if it is not supported by the mod? Have other blind people found ways of doing this? I am definitely excited to see what this is like for sure, I just wonder how I will be able to get started, I don't have readily available sighted assistance to help me do that unfortunately.
I had to have sighted assistance for the world select. Create a sim I got past by downloading a blank world save file that someone else made and putting it my saves folder.
Hi there :) Fellow game modder and fully blind screen reader user here, I'm doing something very similar but for Paralives, Cult of the Lamb and a few other projects. I'm curious, to what degree would you consider this project complete currently, like what big things are you still planning to add? Mostly wondering about quicker ways to get around (very few screen reader dependent people use a mouse so would only have access to the numpad keys which would probably slow gameplay down a fair bit), and the limitations you point out re: the sim maker and main menu screens. Not sure if the game gives you enough modding surface to do much about any of these, i haven't looked into it that deeply. Always good to meet fellow developers fighting the good fight! :)
Hey! Nice to hear you building a mod for Paralives. I’d consider this mod complete once I’m able to get Create-A-Sim, the Main Menu, and the Manage Worlds screen narrated. Navigation could also potentially be improved by adding controller support, but I'm not sure how feasible that is.
I am having some interesting problems with this mod. I can't get to the incoming text messages/phone calls as they disappear after a short time and the mod doesn't show them, to my knowledge.
I will look into this!
Hi there. I just wanted to thank you for this mod. I'm totally blind and have always been curious about the Sims, but never really had a great way to play it without sighted help. I realize that CAS support and world selection will be difficult, but I hope they are at least on the roadmap as currently the opening experience is a bit tricky. I would love any further updates and appreciate your choosing to work on this, particularly in light of how small the audience of blind sims players is likely to be, all things considered :)
I've also had a tricky experience with the game. Have you played much? I am also a totally blind player and would love tips for this mod.
Wow I’m not blind but I still deeply appreciate this!
Hi this is a dumb question or maybe not, but how do you use the purchase update. It says the name and 0 but I don't know how to increase the total count for an item.
When you’re focused over it with the keyboard navigation, you can press left or right to increase or decrease the amount. I suggest using the keyboard navigation when the picker comes up cause the arrows to increase and decrease are very small.
this is so beautiful and amazing
Omg I love this!!!! I teach blind students and this is amazing!!!
You're amazing Ty. Wow.
Hi I have a question, when you are buying from a menu like purchase gifts how do you get to the checkboxes to say how many? Because my sim is sick and I found the medicine but I can't seem to find the count thing where it tells you how many you want. Thank you
I will need to add support the purchase pickers, look like those slipped through in testing. I'll work on the update over the weekend to make the purchase experience more accessible.
KING OF MODDING
I truly appreciate you doing this
Congrats on getting the mod up and running! I'm glad I got to be apart of the testing phase of this mod. It truly is amazing <3
Thank you for your help!
Absolutely incredible, no notes
I just wanna say thank you. I am legally blind and this can be very helpful. I do use UI Cheats so unfortunately I won't be able to use this but I think it's wonderful that you have put this together for people with vision problems. As of right now I use my magnifier that's built into Windows so that I can see the text on the screen in game. But thank you and God bless you <3
I added support for UI Cheats!
Although I don't need it, I am very supportive of you! Thank you for your great contribution to this game
This is amazing!! Thank you for making the game more accessible
You're incredible!!! An amazingly talented modder and a wonderful person!
So incredible. I thank you for all these people. Thank you for your kindness.
wow 🥹 I am sighted but I have a degenerative condition that means that I may lose the rest of my vision eventually. I use assistive tech to give my eyes a break when they feel strained and as practice for when I may need it, and it's always made me sad that my favorite game doesn't have those options. thank you <3
i'm in the losing phase myself. this mod gives me hope of not losing something i love so much
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I am visually impaired and this will be so helpful.
The kindness of you devoting your time to make this game more accessible inspired me to switch from a free to paid subscriber for you. We need more modders like you
This shouldnt even have to be a mod, it should be part of the game. Its thanks to modders like you who make the game playable for so many people. Thank you for caring for those who get left behind. You're a gem!
This is so incredibly thoughtful for people, thank you so much for all your hard work the game would never be the same without your mods!!!
That is incredibly thoughtful. you deserve the world!
I know people who depend on screen readers and I’m tearing up over how incredibly kind and thoughtful you are to create this. Bless you.
Thank-you so much for this mod will help me