For a legally blind player, Far Cry 6’s accessibility options are empowering

I would love if all games let you change the font and font size. I loved Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but god, I’m too nearsighted to deal with text that small.

> I don't mean include a TTS engine in your game, just send the text to an application , or local port that the user specified and the user can't use it's own TTS program with his preferred settings to listen for the text.

How does this kind of thing work? I'm only (passingly) familiar with the “official” accessibility APIs, e.g. IAccessible, AT-SPI2, but these are clearly inadequate; I'm very curious to know how real people use computers.

> You're average game dev studi does not have any of that.

I sort of wonder, reading this, what kind of accessibility regulations exist in Canada (FC6 being developed by Ubisoft Toronto) has for gaming and how it compares to other technology providers, solutions or products?

This is exactly my point though - hiring disabled people is simply not an option for most people. If information on meaningful accessibility was as readily available and consumable as learning how to code, I'd bet a lot of money people would be more inclined to make accessible software.

Meanwhile mixing red and blue help a lot with certain eye conditions :(

You're getting downvoted, but honestly I feel like this is the elephant in the room of accessibility efforts.

A lot of them just feel like they're catering to a tiny slice of the user base that would probably be better served in some other way. In some cases, they arguably make things worse for everyone else, like WCAG 1.4.1, mandating that your links have ugly underlines just because some people might have trouble reading them. Fun fact: HackerNews's links are noncompliant, and could get them sued in Canada.

26% of all citizens in the US have some type of disability. [CDC]

7,675,600 US citizens have visual disabilities. [National Federation of the Blind]

3.7% of all US citizens have fine motor skill disabilities. [NIH]

Also, it's the right thing to do to ensure everyone can experience joy.

I've said this before and I will say it again, accessibility options benefit everyone, not just the 0.1%.

My partner is ESL, she understands spoken English fine when it's slow and precise, but in the fast environments of TV and Games, it's often hard for her to quickly get what they just said. So, subtitles, the accessibility option for the hard of hearing, is beneficial to her.

Similarly, I may want a more casual gaming experience but experience the same story as someone else - but difficulty is subjective. I may want just a larger reticle so I can see better, reduced motion blur and walking bounces so I don't feel sick.

These little options are a relatively simple addition which benefits absolutely everyone

Everyone is eventually disabled sometime.

The odds of anyone actually responding to you instead of just demonizing you, condescending to you, or talking past you are very slim, although a couple people have made good faith responses.

Something they haven't said yet is that a lot of accessibility features are already a solved problem, or they're commonplace enough that they seem to be. So a big publisher (which is what your parent was referring to) would be able to get them in at low cost, relative to gigantic overall costs of publishing any AAA game. So it makes sense for them to do it to reach everyone they can. And they know people will write articles like this one and bring them publicity, and if not they'll just astroturf one anyway. The author of that article has had at least one other accessibility-related article published on the gaming web recently, so don't assume they're not just on a press junket.

For all developers, your question is more of a question. Should every single game developed by every single type of developer be "accessible"? It would certainly be nice, but must they? Of course not.

Accessibility can mean two things: affordances that people need to have an equal experience, but also affordance that people would like to have a more pleasurable experience. And in the entertainment business, people experiencing pleasure tends to be good business.

As noted in many introductions to accessibility, these features help more than just the stereotypical example you may think of when hearing that word. There are many forms of accessibility: lifelong, acquired, temporary, chronic, and situational. Between those 5 forms, these features really help everyone.

It’s all about context, consideration, dignity, but mostly, letting the challenge be the puzzle itself instead of the structure of the scaffolding holding the puzzle in place.

People think like this all time, until something happens to them. A few years ago I seriously hurt myself in a ski accident. I'm better now, but only then did I notice all the little things that we could do, without really much effort on our part, to make things accesible for other people. I'm not talking about treating anyone special at all, I mean accessible in the most literal sense of the word. To even have a seat at the metaphorical table.

All I can say is that if you were in a similar situation you would just see this differently, which is an obvious thing to say, I know, but I really mean it. Like, you would with every fiber in your body, just see this entire situation completely differently.

Any way, I don't think there's any harm in asking the "why" question, but it is harmful to ask it rhetorically I guess? I'm not saying that's what you were doing, but I mean just generally speaking, to ask the question as if to make a point assuming the answer is already known. It implies the question doesn't need asking, and the answer is obvious. The real truth couldn't be further from that, but it's kind of hard to understand if you can't experience it for yourself.

Also, I really want to just head off any "truth is subjective" type comments, or "your reality vs my reality". It's like, yes, there is always that, but what I mean is if someone suddenly lost their mobility and had to experience a world suddenly inaccessible, they would just understand what I mean in a way that's deeper than petty rhetoric. It just wouldn't make any sense by that point to pretend that this isn't important.

As Gen X and Millennials eventually retire[0], there are going to be a ton of people with lots and lots of time on their hands, with vision and hearing and fine motor control mostly ranging between "so-so" and "terrible" (thanks, aging!) who really want to spend some of their now-ample free time playing video games.

[0] Well, I mean, hypothetically these generations might retire in significant numbers around "normal" retirement age, even if the numbers aren't looking so hot for that right now....

I assumed it was less about budget and more about the directors and artists refusing to concede control over how their game looks and works.

Kind of like how the Magic Mouse charging port placement is designed to prevent people from using it while charging, since that's "ugly"...

It is reasonable that blind people will enjoy an experience that is based on hand eye coordination and visual spectacle less.

> the right to do exams in Braille

Because if someone has a perfect sight he is not allowed to do exams in Braille?

An example of this challenge appearing elsewhere: in the US, long-haul effects of COVID have recently moved under the Americans with Disabilities Act umbrella. The problem, however, is there’s not a single easy, testable way to determine if someone has it or not.

Most visually disabled people retain some usable vision. The levels for qualifying for a driver's license are different than the definition of legally blind. For instance, my state requires vision correctable to at least 20/40 in one eye, and a FOV of at least 60 degrees to drive without special bioptic lenses (basically a monocular that attaches to a pair of glasses.) To be classified as legally blind (at least in the United States) you must have vision that cannot be corrected to better than 20/200, or a field of view of less than 20 degrees. It gets complicated because you can be on disability even if you don't meet the definition of "legally blind" if you have vision issues that cause you to be unable to work. This is on a case by case basis and requires a hearing in front of a disability judge.

20/200 means that a person with that level of vision is able to read something from a 20 foot distance that someone with 20/20 vision would be able to read from 200 feet away.