RetroArch for the Blind
December 12, 2019 6:46 PM   Subscribe

Video games for the blind are perhaps a contradiction in terms, but this upcoming project hopes to improve the situation.
posted by Alensin (4 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like regular screen readers don't work for emulated games, because the text on screen isn't in a format they can read (?). So this new emulator has made a point of making the menu items readable and is doing OCR on the screen text in order to read it out.

The demo is really interesting and a good introductory peek into what that user experience is like. Thanks for posting it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:48 PM on December 12, 2019


I find these posts really interesting, I still find myself thinking back to I believe also Alensin's 2017 post on playing Roguelikes, and how accessibility could be demanded and built into many games from day 1.
posted by Acid Communist at 10:16 PM on December 12, 2019 [1 favorite]


Here is Terry Garrett, a blind gamer who runs Oddworld and Zelda games among others. You can find interviews with him talking about his experiences and explaining his sound-intensive memorization techniques. For gamers like him, detailed sound design and non-punishing failure modes (such as easy quicksaves) are crucial to accessible gameplay, as is predictable and repeatable game behavior. Watching him flawlessly execute Oddworld: Abe's Oddyssey is incredible. He also has a fascinating run of Majora's Mask at an AGDQ charity marathon event, I believe, but he does rely on verbal confirmation of his spatial preparations from his sighted friend, for the "marathon safety" any runner will choose, so as to not go over allotted time in the live event.

Many highly marketed and widely lauded games are basically impossible for someone without sight, in their current forms. Something like Dark Souls, with very precise and quick visual spatial problem-solving (don't get hit, do hit things, in fractions of a second, for long minutes at a time) and very punishing failure modes (two or three hits within five or ten seconds, and your character's progress is erased and reset to a distant save point) has fuck all to offer a blind player. FPSes are nearly out of the question.

I'm not terrible at action or FPS games but ever since I've found this player, the bloom is off the rose for me. The privilege and exclusion is long standing.
posted by panhopticon at 11:05 PM on December 12, 2019 [2 favorites]


Shades of Doom! No GUI, just sound, walking around with surround sound and monsters. Oh, and pits you could fall into, which I thought was a bit unfair.
posted by alasdair at 2:42 AM on December 13, 2019


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