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Sign in to Ability Corner Network
There is one way in: your Network account — a username and a password. If you don't have one yet, make one below. Either way you're a full member of the Network, and only people in our circle can join: new accounts wait in the lobby until an approver lets them in. That's the lock on the door that keeps this place ours.
Sign in with your Network account
Use your Network username — or your email address, if that's the username you chose — and your password. We will never send you email; an email username is only the name you sign in with. If you ever forget your password, an approver resets it for you in person; the help desk below is how you ask.
Already have a Network account?
Stuck? Ask for help
Locked out, can't get in, or not sure which door is yours? Leave your name and we'll come to you: the approvers get your note right away, and one of our hosts — Devlin or Harmony — will be watching for you at the door.
Set your own password
An approver set a temporary password for your Network account so you could get back in. Before anything else opens, choose your own — from here on, only you know it.
You're in the lobby
Your account is made, and it's waiting for an approver to let you in — every new account here waits, and a person, not a machine, makes the call. While you wait, tell us a little about yourself below: it helps the approver know who's at the door. You can change your answers any time while you wait.
One question before you come in
Everyone who joins the Ability Corner Network tells us whether they are visiting or settling in. A resident is settling in — this becomes your place, with a house of your own in time. A visitor is our guest for a stay that runs a month at a time at the longest: you can go everywhere a guest can go, and when the end is near, the neighbors where you're staying will count it down with you — you can extend it, up to two weeks at a time, within the month. If a visit runs out, the account closes, and the people here remember you.
Home
Your home screen: what is new for you, what is coming up, and quick doors to your places and your wallet. Everything here is a summary — the full thing is in its own tab.
Notifications
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The announcement you opened
Announcements
Coming up
Your places
Your wallet
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What's new
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DMs
Type a letter to jump to the first conversation starting with it.
Characters
The people of the Network. Choose one to see who they are. To start a private conversation, send them a friend request — once they accept, your conversation opens, and only you and they can read it. A conversation you're already in stays open either way. Cruise crew are staff, so there's no friending them: book a voyage and your personal representative is yours — or ask any of them a question, right from their profile.
Character profile
Life so far
Ask a question
Your questions
Conversation
Polling place
Change your registration
Organization
Directory
At the front door
In this group
People here
Near this place
How music carries outside this house
The front door
Keys
This house's keys live apart from the building, in a private section only its own household can see.
Change of address
The house's things
This place
Sounds
Fire drills
Your house's design
Invite someone to this space
Leaving
Rooms in this building
Who is here
The building's record
Times board
Talk
Voice
Microphone settings live in Settings.
Microphone settings live in Settings.
Where your voice sits for the others on this call — an arrangement of the call itself, in stereo. It claims no standing and changes no place: nobody is anywhere, it is only where a voice is heard.
Games
House keys
Set the keypad code by pressing its digits, then Set the code. Four to eight digits. The code stands here, in your private section, so you can read it back — it is shown nowhere else.
The keys of record
Acts of record
Place settings
Keys
Acts of record
Sounds
Address of record
Hours of record
Group settings
Joining and leaving
Who can come in
Knocking at the door
Leaving
Membership
Adding people
This is a home — nobody is added to a house. Someone who wants in knocks at the door and is let in.
Branches
A branch is a private space inside this group — its own conversation, for just the people in it. Only its members can see it or a word said in it.
Ownership
A group chat has no keys: before the owner leaves, they hand the chat to someone in it. People in leadership are listed first and marked; choosing anyone here makes them the owner as you step out.
Buildings
These are places you enter. Buildings stand in the city you are in — travel somewhere and the list becomes that city's. Houses stand in their city too: a house is listed when you are in its city, and your own house — and any house you have been let into — is always listed, wherever you are. A house's address is not in this list: an address is read at the house itself, standing at its street. A private place you haven't been let into opens its lobby instead: from the lobby you can knock and wait at the door, and nothing inside can be seen from there.
Type a letter to jump to the first group starting with it. These are conversations — group chats, not places. A private group chat is for the people in it: if you would like in, knock, and someone inside can let you in.
These are ships — vessels that stand as places of their own, beside the buildings: the cruiseline's ships, and the ships of the explored worlds. A ship is entered where she stands.
These are planets — worlds that have buildings on them. A planet stands here only once you have traveled to it: standing on Earth, your world shows Earth.
Airports
Restaurants
Private space
This door has a keypad. Press its digits, then open the door with the code.
Start a new group
Restaurant
Who is here
Where you stand
Tables
Menu
Your orders
Talk
To leave, walk to the front door and step through it.
Designing your house
You are designing this house. Only the design is here — nothing else competes with it. The design is divided into tabs: the house itself, the room you are in, its materials and paint, and its windows and safe room. A room's design is worked from inside it — go to the room, and its design is there. Moving furniture is carrying it: take a piece up in its room, carry it with you, and put it down, carefully, in the room where it belongs.
Renovate your house
These are the house's own acts: its shape, and rooms added or closed up — none of them needs you to stand anywhere in particular. A standing room's own design — its name, its floor, its door — is changed from inside it, in the This room tab.
House work — renovations
Work on a house that already stands designed is real work: it takes its time, its materials come from a real store in your city, and you either do it with your own hands or hire one of your city's workers of record and pay them in Ability Corner Dollars. The design itself changes only when the work is done. (Your first design needed none of this, and never will.)
House services — help that comes to the house
Cleaners, housekeepers, and electricians are people of your own city. When you hire one, they come to your door and the house is told who has come and what the job is; they are let in for the work they were hired to do, and the letting-in ends when the work is done. A visit is paid for when it is booked, out of your Ability Corner Dollars. Housekeeping can be a single visit or a weekly arrangement you can stop any time — each visit is booked and paid one ahead, and if a booking cannot be paid for, no visit stands booked unpaid and the arrangement ends with the reason in the house's record.
Roof, construction companies & garbage
Your house has a roof of record — what it is made of and how it stands. Under a sound roof the rain stays out; a worn roof lets it in, and the house's record says so while it rains. Roof work is hired from a construction company of your city, on the company's own terms: book it here through the company's booking, or book it by calling the company on the phone — either way the same job stands, the crew comes to your door under the hire, and the work is paid for when it is booked. Garbage is a record, not a chore to simulate: the company your household goes through and your pickup day.
This room
Furniture in this room
Your house came furnished by its design — the furniture below stands in this room. To move a piece, take it up here, carry it with you to the room it belongs in, and put it down there — carefully, the way a person moves a thing in their home. A piece you never touch simply never moves. Furniture your household buys is yours: it goes with you if you move. What the design furnished stays with the house.
Who is at the furniture
Furniture is stood at, sat on, and worked behind — the people in this room stand in relation to its pieces, the way people do. A worked desk reads as staffed here; who stands behind it is the house's own business.
Things in this room
The house's own things standing in this room — on its furniture, in the room itself, on its wall. Take one down to carry it, the way you take a piece up; a thing of this house in your hands can be put down here, from the carrying line above — in this room, or on one of its pieces.
The house's rooms
Every room of the house, named so you can find your way to it. A room's design is worked from inside it — leave here, go to the room, step in, and its design is in this tab. When you leave a room, its design stays in the room.
Materials and paint
What this house is made of, as its design records it. The household's own note and the house's paint are here, being the house's own. A room's floor and paint are read in the room itself — in the This room tab, standing in it. Nothing is invented for a room whose design names nothing.
Nothing is in the materials record yet — the rooms' floors and paint are named as the design names them.
Your house's windows and pet door
Open and shut what your design gave this house — the states are live facts of the house. A piece your design didn't give it is not here: there is nothing to operate. (Your front door is worked at its own door controls, above.)
Windows and the safe room
Notifications
Recent notifications. Choose one to jump straight to the conversation.
Push on this device
Push sends your notifications to this device even when the Network isn't open. It's off until you turn it on here, and you can turn it off any time.
Your wallet — Ability Corner Dollars
Your wallet is yours: only you ever see this. Work pays Ability Corner Dollars; 120 of them make one U.S. dollar, and the rate moves a little with the world's economy — today's rate and its history are below. In your own city you do not pay for its things; visiting, you pay like anyone visiting.
Give Ability Corner Dollars
Giving is how money moves between people here: choose who receives it, and it is theirs the moment you give.
Your wallet's recent records
Your taxes
Taxes on wages are withheld as you earn. Income that arrives untaxed — a payment you received, a house sale — is assessed on Tax Day, April 15, for the year it is in. Your standing is yours alone; nobody else is ever told it.
Today's rates
Friends
Friend requests waiting for you
Your friends
Type a letter to jump to the first friend starting with it.
Add a friend
For a person, type their Network username. For a character, type their full name — like Emily Howard. Characters accept friend requests just like people do.
Beacon
The virtual beacon lets you and a friend share roughly how far apart your virtual car — or you yourself — are. It is off by default, each layer (car, person) is shared separately, both people must agree before either side sees anything, and it only ever shows an approximate distance — never an exact location. The Network's characters can share beacons on exactly the same terms: you can ask one below, and they decide for themselves whether to agree — nobody can agree for them. A character's distance is measured from where their own record places them, and characters appear in the lists labeled as the character they are. Your beacon can also stand where you actually are: turn on your device's GPS below and this phone or computer reports its own location to your beacon — only yours, only while your switch is on. If you grant your actual location through the beacon, people who pass by you may notice and remember seeing you there — the way neighbors do. And while your device GPS switch is on, the Network's characters can know where your phone is — where you actually are, moving as you move — the way a family's phones can find each other. Your device reports only while this app is open on it; with the app closed, your beacon stays where it last showed, and says so. Nobody follows a beacon like a map.
What you share
Your car
Where your beacon is
People you share with
Seen around
Who and what you have passed by and noticed, and when. It is knowledge with a date on it — it goes stale the way real knowledge does, and it follows nobody.
Out and about in your city
Visiting life of record in the city you are in — the trucks and rounds that come through its neighborhoods while they are around.
Gone a long while
People you know — friends, people you share with, and characters whose people you are — who have been away from their home city a long while, and where their phone last truly showed. A last-known place is labelled as last-known: it is where their phone last showed, not a claim about where they are this minute.
Requests waiting for you
Requests you sent
Ask a friend to share
Ask a character to share
Asking opens a request — the character decides for themselves, in their own time, and nothing is shared until they agree and both sides are sharing the layer.
Your beacon keeps itself up — there is no check-in to make. While your GPS switch is on it follows your device's own reports, this app takes a fresh fix whenever you come back to it, and where you are in the Network comes from the places you enter. It only ever stands behind what was actually reported — it never guesses where you are.
Approvals
Lobby
People waiting to join the Network. Approve the ones you know.
Allow list
Network usernames approved ahead of time. Adding a name approves that username before the person signs up — and if they have already signed up and are waiting, it lets them straight in.
Sign-in help desk
People stuck at the sign-in door — they left their name and asked for help. Help them in (approve their account, or set a temporary password below), then mark the request handled.
Network account passwords
These accounts sign in with a Network password. Resetting sets a temporary password the person must replace at their next sign-in — hand it to them in person, never send it anywhere.
Recent decisions
Settings
Version and updates
The Network keeps itself up to date. In the Windows app, a new version is offered to you when the app opens — it asks first, and nothing is installed without your say-so. You can also check yourself, any time, with the button below when it appears.
Checking the version…
Time format
Direction style
My disability declaration
Voting
This device
Voice
The voice settings for this device stand here.
Microphone
Your account
Your account home: your details, your picture if you choose one, and your password — everything about your own account stands here, and nothing about anyone else's.
Your profile picture
This is the name everyone in the Network sees and the name people (and characters) greet you by. It is saved in the Network only. Leave it blank to use the name already on your record instead.
Your Network password
You sign in with a Network username and password. Change your password here — you'll need the current one. If you ever forget it completely, use the “Need help” button on the sign-in screen and an approver will reset it for you in person.
Do Not Disturb and quiet hours
Quiet hours are 12:00 AM–8:00 AM Eastern by default. Messages sent to you during quiet hours are held unless you're active, and delivered when you're back or at 8:00 AM. Your own schedule below overrides the default.
My status
Tell people in the Network how things are with you right now — available, busy, or asleep. It shows next to your name, so people and characters alike can see it, and you can add a few words of your own. This only says what's true because you set it: it doesn't hold your messages or change your notifications — that's Do Not Disturb above. Clear it any time by choosing “No status”.
GPS
Your own switch — off unless you turn it on. While GPS is on, a shuttle or ride can find you where you stand, and your position reaches the Network from this app while it is open. The newest report is where your beacon is, and every standing says when it was last confirmed: a report from a while ago reads as last-known, never as now. This switch decides whether the Network uses your location at all — off, and no report from any source is used. Nothing is kept as a history: only where you stand, never a trail of where you have been.
Your phone does not share its location in the background, so while this app is closed your beacon stays at your last shared place until you open the app again. The way to keep sharing while the app is closed is an app on your phone that can hold background location permission — the Ability Corner app. This page in a browser cannot do it: a web page gets no location while it is closed.
Location in the Ability Corner app
You are using the Ability Corner app on this phone. With your GPS switch on (above), the app can keep your beacon reporting while you are out in the real world, even when the app is closed — the same reporting it already keeps while the app is open. Android will ask for location in two steps: first while you use the app, then “Allow all the time.” That second step is the one that lets the app report while it is closed. You can stop it at any moment: turn the GPS switch off here, or remove this phone under “Your phones on the Ability Corner app” below.
Your phones on the Ability Corner app
A phone listed here can report where you stand through the Ability Corner app, under your GPS switch above. When a phone connects, the app is shown a secret key once and keeps it on the phone; the key is never shown here or anywhere else again. If a phone is lost or replaced, remove it here and its reports stop being accepted at once.
No phone is connected through the Ability Corner app right now.
Screen reader mode
The app works fully with a screen reader either way. Screen reader mode adds more verbose announcements and extra-explicit focus handling.
Ride driver preferences
For shuttles and Freedom Rides: who drives you. These are on unless you turn them off, and they take effect the next time a ride is dispatched to you.
Notifications in the app
While the Network is open, new notifications — messages, announcements, system messages, booking and ride updates — are read aloud as they arrive, so you don't have to keep checking the Notifications page. Turn this off and arrivals stay silent in the app. Push is not affected — it stands with your notifications, in the Notifications area.
For all direct messages:
Weather alerts
Severe weather alerts reach you only for the area you are in — your standing in the Network — and for any other areas you add here. The area you are standing in is always covered: you do not need to add it, and it cannot be taken off while you are there. Adding an area is your own choice — its alerts reach you wherever you are, until you take it off. Each area below saves the moment you change it.
Loading your weather areas…
What's new
What has changed in the Ability Corner Network, newest first — the same list that ships with the app as its changelog. It gets a new entry every time the Network is updated.
Loading what's new…
Your places
The houses and buildings you founded or lead keep their keys and their sounds here — in Settings, on this device. Administering a place never stands in the place itself, and never in living mode: inside a place you simply live there and hear its sounds. Open a place below to work with its keys and its sounds.