Bills Must Be Accessible

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Bills Must Be Accessible lets you play Bills Must Be Paid with a screen reader. It reads every screen out loud, lets you move through menus with the arrow keys, and aims the hammer for you during runs. It talks through NVDA, JAWS or Narrator, or through the Windows voices if no screen reader is running.

The mod speaks the same language as the game. If you change the game's language, the mod switches with it.

Installing

1. Download BepInEx 6 bleeding edge for IL2CPP x64, build 788 or newer, from https://builds.bepinex.dev/projects/bepinex_be (the file is called something like BepInEx-Unity.IL2CPP-win-x64-6.0.0-be.788...zip). Unzip it into the game folder, next to Bills Must Be Paid.exe.
2. Open BepInEx\config\BepInEx.cfg. Under [Logging] set UnityLogListening = false. Without this the game crashes at startup. Under [Logging.Console] set Enabled = false.
3. Copy the BillsAccess folder into BepInEx\plugins\.
4. Start the game from Steam. The very first start can take one to three minutes while BepInEx gets things ready. When you hear "Bills Must Be Accessible loaded" and then the main menu, you're set.

Getting your bearings

You don't have to ask the mod to read things. When a screen opens, it reads it. When you move to a button, it says the button. A few keys work almost anywhere:

• F1: tells you which keys work on the screen you're on right now.
• F2: your status. Money, stamina during a run, and every unpaid bill with its due date.
• F3: reads the current screen again from the top.

Buffers

Buffers are lists you can read line by line without leaving what you're doing. They're handy when something was said too fast, or when you want the full text of a tooltip.

• Control + Left and Control + Right: switch to the previous or next buffer. Its name is said.
• Control + Up and Control + Down: read the next or previous line. Up goes further into the list: in History, back to older lines.
• Control + Home and Control + End: jump to the first or last line.

The buffers:

• Details: the full description of whatever you're on, such as a tooltip, a skill or a shop item. When something new with details gets focus, this buffer becomes the current one.
• History: the last 200 things the mod said, newest first.
• Piggies: only during a run. Every piggy on the desk, in the same order as Left and Right.
• Screen: the current screen, line by line.
• Status: the same numbers as F2, each with its name: money, money from this run, bills, the boss's health, Legacy Points, days paid early, what you owe Big Toni. It also has the explanations the game shows when a mouse hovers over the wallet.
• Skills: only in the skill tree. Every skill. Moving through this list also moves you in the tree.

Menus

• Up and Down: move between buttons and options.
• Left and Right: change a slider or a list. Each press says the new value.
• Enter: press the button, or open a list. In an open list, Up, Down, Home and End stay inside the list, and Enter picks the option.
• Home and End: first and last item.
• Backspace: go back.
• Escape and Space keep doing what they do in the game: Escape opens the pause menu, and Space continues to the next run from the upgrades screen.

Story pages, new piggy announcements, new coins and similar popups are read when they appear. Press Enter to move on.

Between runs: the upgrades screen

Skill tree

• Arrow keys move between skills, following the shape of the tree. Each skill is read with its state, level and price, then its description.
• Enter buys the skill.
• F4 reads the skill again.
• F6 jumps to the menu bar at the top (Bills, Skill Tree, Piggies, Shop, Collection and so on) and back.
• F8 lists the perks you own and the rings you're wearing. F8 or Backspace closes the list.

Shop, Collection, Piggies, reward cards

• Arrow keys move between items, the same way the items are laid out on screen.
• Enter buys, equips or picks.
• F6 switches between the items, the screen's own buttons when it has any, and the menu bar. Backspace leaves the menu bar.

Locked piggies only show up as a dark shape in the game, and that's all the mod tells you about them too.

Bills and Big Toni

• The bill is read with the amount, the due date and how much money you have.
• If a bill is due right now and you don't have enough money, the Pay Bill button warns you that paying now means bankruptcy.
• If a bill isn't due yet and you can't afford it, Pay Bill says "not enough money", and Enter on it reminds you that Backspace closes the bill.
• Call Big Toni to borrow money. His terms are read before you accept. While you owe him, the bill says how much, and the same button lets you pay him back.

During a run

How the hammer works

In this game the hammer swings on its own, about once a second, wherever the mouse is. A sighted player just keeps the mouse on the piggies. The mod does that for you: the aim always stays on a piggy. That's the one you chose, or the nearest one if you haven't chosen yet or yours broke. No swing is wasted on the empty desk.

Keys

• Left and Right: previous or next piggy, from left to right across the desk.
• Up: the best target. That means a piggy marked for an instant kill, one about to escape, a thief, a glowing one, the boss, and otherwise the one with the most loot for its health.
• Down: the nearest piggy.
• F4: everything about the current target: health, loot, where it is, what it looks like and the game's description.
• Space: swing right now. Hold it to keep swinging.
• Q: hit the Mini Slot Machine on your desk, if you own one, so it spins straight away.
• F2: stamina, money and how many piggies are left.

What you hear

The start of the run with the piggies on the desk, special piggies arriving, broken piggies with their loot (several at once are grouped into one line), escapes, stamina at 50, 25 and 10 percent, and the game's big moments like coin rain and jackpots. In the boss run you hear the boss's health at 75, 50, 25 and 10 percent. Gadgets work by themselves, and you hear them when they act.

Aiming modes

You pick one in Settings, on the Accessibility tab, under "Aiming during a run".

• Real time: the default. The run keeps going while you choose a target, just like for a sighted player.
• Pause while choosing a piggy: the run starts paused, and any arrow key pauses it again. While it's paused, stamina doesn't go down and piggies don't move. Choose a piggy, then press Space or Enter, and the game carries on with the hammer hitting that piggy. Backspace carries on without changing anything.
• Pause and aim by ear: here you aim each swing yourself, by ear. The game stays paused except while you swing. Choose a piggy and press Space or Enter. Ticks start crossing the desk from side to side at that piggy's depth. The closer they pass to your piggy, the louder and higher they get. Press Space or Enter again when they're loudest. You'll hear "Hit", "Another piggy" with its name, or "Missed", and the game pauses again. Backspace stops the ticks, and a second Backspace goes back to real time. Space pauses again.

In both pause modes, the game also pauses as soon as a piggy breaks, and your next target is named. Sounds already playing, like the piggy breaking, play to the end.

In both pause modes, if you open the game's pause menu and come back, the mod reminds you that you're still paused for aiming.

Mini-games

Piggy Shuffle

Left and Right set your bet, and Enter starts. The mod tells you which piggy the coins go into. Then the piggies get shuffled, and you follow that one. How you follow it is a setting:

• Stereo sound (the default): a clink comes from the left, center or right speaker each time that piggy moves. Nothing is said. It's on you to keep track, just like a sighted player keeps their eyes on it.
• Sound with pitch: the same clink, but also low on the left, middle in the center and high on the right. Good if you hear better with one ear.
• Spoken positions: the mod says left, center or right each time it moves.

When the shuffling stops, choose left, center or right with the arrows and press Enter. The hammer charges, counts down and smashes.

If a bill is due and you can't pay it, the results screen may offer Piggy Shuffle as a last chance, as long as you have some money to bet.

Double or Nothing

Up and Down choose between hitting the coin, turning it over, and asking which side is up. Enter does it. You hear the coin fly, bounce and land.

Settings

Open the game's Settings from the main menu or the pause menu. After the game's own tabs (General, Cursor, Gameplay) there's an extra tab called Accessibility. It works like the others: move along the tabs with Left and Right, press Enter on Accessibility, and its options are read. Move down to an option and change it with Left and Right, or press Enter to open the list. Changes apply right away, even in the middle of a run.

• Piggy Shuffle: follow the shuffle with: Stereo sound, Sound with pitch, or Spoken positions. Picking a sound option plays left, center and right once so you can hear it.
• Aiming during a run: Real time, Pause while choosing a piggy, or Pause and aim by ear.
• Aim by ear: speed of the ticks: Slow (about 4 seconds to cross the desk), Normal (about 3) or Fast (about 2).
• Broken piggies during a run: announce every one, only special ones, or none.

The mod saves these in BepInEx\config\access.billsmustbepaid.cfg. You can also edit that file while the game is closed.

If something goes wrong

• No speech at all: check that your screen reader is running before you start the game. Without one, the mod uses the Windows voices.
• The mod writes what it does to BepInEx\plugins\BillsAccess\BillsAccess.log. If you report a problem, that file helps a lot.

Uninstalling

Delete the BepInEx\plugins\BillsAccess folder. To remove BepInEx as well, delete winhttp.dll, doorstop_config.ini, .doorstop_version, changelog.txt and the BepInEx and dotnet folders from the game folder.