{"id":629150,"date":"2023-04-14T09:49:59","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/games-are-more-visually-accessible-than-ever-its-just-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2023-04-14T09:49:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:49:59","slug":"games-are-more-visually-accessible-than-ever-its-just-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/14\/games-are-more-visually-accessible-than-ever-its-just-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Games Are More Visually Accessible Than Ever. It\u2019s Just the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One of those games is\u00a0God of War Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em><\/a>. It employs a smart navigation tool that allows a \u201cbutton press to turn the character toward the objective,\u201d Mila Pavlin, design director UX at Monolith (and former UX lead on\u00a0God of War<\/em>) tells\u00a0WIRED. This lets blind players track both main and side quests, providing a \u201clarge amount of autonomy in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something Brandon finds especially helpful, though he notes\u00a0God of War Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em>\u2019s text-to-speech function somewhat undoes the gains of its navigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not narrate character, inventory, map, and shop screens, which is just \u2026 painful,\u201d Brandon said before adding: \u201cIf something a sighted person can read is not read to us, that thing is not accessible. Simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite its issues, however,\u00a0God of War Ragnar\u00f6k<\/em>\u2019s accessibility represents a major step forward from 2018\u2019s\u00a0God of War<\/em>. \u201cThe agency that was added is miles ahead of where we were then,\u201d Mila says.<\/p>\n

In the realm of sound, another vital aspect of blind and visually impaired accessibility, indie game\u00a01428: Shadows of Silesia<\/em>\u00a0remains a standout for its pioneering\u00a0combination of blind accessibility features<\/a>. Luk\u00e1\u0161 Hosnedl, a Czech accessibility consultant, told\u00a0WIRED\u00a0that Shadows of Silesia<\/em>\u00a0\u201cprovides audio cues for obstacles in the way as well as enemies, friendly and neutral characters, and important or destructible but noninteractable objects such as traps, hazards, or barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In conjunction with an extensive text-to-speech function, this gives blind and visually impaired players remarkable control over their environment.<\/p>\n

While sound design is important, however, many blind and visually impaired players pointed out that it is\u00a0variation<\/em>\u00a0within sound design that is key: the ability to identify different functions with different sounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cEncouraging your audio team to create unique and subtle sounds as much as possible will greatly improve the game experience for both blind and sighted players,\u201d explains Topher Winward,\u00a0a software engineer at Rare Ltd<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But all of those accessibility features aren\u2019t worth much if they\u2019re buried in menus and difficult to find. That\u2019s why some games make sure those settings are the first things a player sees.\u00a0TJ the Blind Gamer<\/a> notes that this is already happening. \u201cA lot of games have started putting accessibility menus right at the beginning of launching a new game,\u201d they say. \u201cEven going so far as to have a text-to-speech or screen-reader implemented at boot-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because accessibility features so often vary between games, studios, and consoles, many players we spoke with suggested the industry adopt across-the-board standards for everyone. \u201cDue to the uniqueness of each video game, standards can be difficult to get right,\u201d Winward says. \u201cThat said, looking at other accessibility standards like web development\u2019s\u00a0Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)<\/a> and the\u00a0WAI-ARIA system<\/a> can provide great inspiration to bring back to your own games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Community Matters<\/p>\n

Important as individual features are in highlighting how far we\u2019ve come with accessibility, and in particular blind accessibility, it\u2019s people that drive the industry forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cGames cannot just ship out the door with these features as an afterthought or missing, and players not consulted,\u201d\u00a0Dan Fischbach<\/a>, cochair of\u00a0IGDA-GASIG<\/a>, tells\u00a0WIRED.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Geoffrey Bunting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of those games is\u00a0God of War Ragnar\u00f6k. It employs a smart navigation tool that allows a \u201cbutton press to turn the character toward the objective,\u201d Mila Pavlin, design director UX at Monolith (and former UX lead on\u00a0God of War) tells\u00a0WIRED. This lets blind players track both main and side quests, providing a \u201clarge amount<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":629151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41283,3291,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-629150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-visually","8":"category-games","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}