Remember, this is only to understand the mining pages playing with a screen reader, if you want a guide on how to mine you can read the guides, or click help on the mining screen.
Download file as mp3
Getting Started Mining
When you are on the default in orbit page you will have a bunch of options in the form of graphics which you can click on. These are normally along the lines of NEI, combat scan, repair options and so on. However if you are orbiting an asteroid you will have a new graphic towards the top for mining. It will either simply read Mine or stat_panel/mine. Again if you want to re-label this you can do so with the insert + f2 then custom label, or the jaws graphics labler insert + G. Clearly you would click on this to mine.
Mining Page 1 , Checking Stats And Firing Into The Asteroid
Below is an example of the first mining page, after the example I'll do a quick breakdown of the page.
This is pretty straight forward, as usual, I'll explain it from the top.
the text "Mining Interface Screen Current Base Scan Rating: 0" is simply telling you what screen you are on, and your base scan rating. You can boost this later using asteroid scanners but currently it will be at 0, that is fine. Note this does not auto calculate the effect of your mining laser.
Next you have a beautifully labeled button called "click me". If I remember right this use to be unlabeled, and Coops labeled it for us blind folks, of course he was very creative in his labeling...lol. This is the button you would press to shoot your mining laser into the field and go to the ore collection page.
Under this you have the stats for your currently fitted mining laser, in my case it is a deep core mk6, and that is all, so the second wep slot is listed as "No Mining Laser".
Then a little bit of text about mining followed by a button to exit mining. This button will bring you back to the default in orbit page.
Mining Page 2, Shooting The Asteroid And Collecting your Ore.
This is assuming you clicked the "click me" button on the first mining page.
Like before I will start out with an example page and break it down after that.
So as usual I'll take it from the top.
First you have a bunch of ship stats in the form of graphics and their values under them, this isn't needed on this page and if you jump by tables or buttons when actually mining which you should be doing they aren't read by your screen reader.
after your fuel graphic and your amount of fuel you have a line that reads, "Cargo Space: 2045". Of course yours isn't that amount, but this simply tells you how much cargo you have remaining. Again you don't need to read this.
After this the table starts which is the meat of this page. The first row is the amounts you have in each window. In this example my first amount is 24, which means I have 24 of the item in the table cell below it. If you don't use table commands you should start using them because it makes stuff like this much easier. To do so hold down control and alt and use arrows to move in the table. Each arrow while holding down these two modifier keys moves you one sell in the direction you press. For example, if you are in the cell that reads qty 24 and hold down control + alt and tap down arrow it will bring you down one table cell which in this example is a labeled graphic of "ore". Down one more cell is a button that says "tractor".
It is best to use your table navigation to move around in this table and get the layout, it is 5 columns wide, meaning you can find up to 5 different ores at once per mining laser shot, and it has 3 main rows, the quantity, the resource/ores, and the tractor buttons.
Now currently you only get ore, this is because your scan rating is only at 0, however as you advance in the game and can use asteroid scanners and Babylon pods to boost your scan rating you can mine for much more valuable ores and getting normal ore will be something you skip over and don't collect. Collecting each window costs 1 fuel so it is important to only collect what you want and not waste fuel on normal ore down the road. At the start it is the only option however, and it is required for the starter NPC missions.
You will notice the last two buttons on the page are "exit collection", which clearly brings you out of the mining collection page and to the mining page 1 again where you can re fire your laser and collect again. The second button is a "loot all" option, this will tractor all the ores in every window automatically and put them all into your ship's hold. This will use fuel for each tractor as if you did it manually.
Mining is tedious work, but it can be lucrative if you do it right and spend the IP required. There are allot of big expensive crafts that require lots of mine only resources which you can get in mass from spending the time mining.