Sight Stats Optional: Gaming Accessibility Rated E for Everyone

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VOICEOVER: Sight Stats Optional: Gaming Accessibility Rated E for Everyone. Speakers, Jesse Anderson, Accessibility Advocate, Ross Miner, Accessibility Consultant, Jenna, aka Jennissary, Media Producer, Descriptive Video Works. Moderator, James Rath, Accessibility Digital Creator.

JAMES RATH: Thank you, Karae. I appreciate that. And let’s talk about gaming accessibility for those who are blind and low vision. I myself was born legally blind and gaming has been a passion of mine since I was young, but not every game has worked for me. And luckily that list has only been expanding in recent years. So I’m going to talk to three amazing panelists today about what it’s like gaming and some here who are blind while others are helping to contribute to making games more accessible for those of us who are blind. So I want to start off by introducing Jenna. Jenna, go ahead and talk a little bit about what you do, who you are.

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: Yeah, thanks so much, James. My name is Jenna. I work for Descriptive Video Works. I’m a producer and I work primarily on our gaming content. So there have been a handful of AAA games that have released in the past few years with professional audio description, and we’ve done all of them. So it’s been a joy and an honor. And sometimes I have to pinch myself and wonder, am I really getting paid to do this? Because it is quite literally my dream job. And we’ve gotten to work with a variety of wonderful consultants, including Ross, if you’d like to introduce yourself.

ROSS MINOR: Gas me up. My name is Ross Minor. I am totally blind and I am an accessibility professional and consultant. I primarily specialize in video game accessibility. So I work with a lot of different studios to, you know, lead workshops on game accessibility or help design accessibility features. Some of the games I’ve worked on include Sea of Thieves or As Dusk Falls. And on the side, I am an audio description narrator. And so, I actually do a lot of work with Descriptive Video Works as well. So, you know, one day, hopefully I get to describe a video game because more and more keep coming out with audio descriptions. And yeah, DVW has pretty much been behind all of that. Oh, and I guess I should say I’m a YouTube creator. Twitch streamer. Minor details. Yeah, minor details. Minor. No, but I make videos about game accessibility on Twitch and YouTube to basically not only educate sighted people about game accessibility, but to educate blind people like, hey, you can play video games too.

JESSE ANDERSON: Fantastic. And Jesse, please take it away. Thank you. Yeah, my name is Jesse Anderson and I am legally blind, AKA illegally sighted. And I do have some usable vision, but I use a combination of magnification and text-to-speech for a lot of the computing stuff that I do. By day, I work as an Assistive Technology Specialist for the State of Minnesota, primarily working with transition-age students. So high school, early college, that kind of a thing. Outside of my day job, I also work as a Game Technology and XR Accessibility Advocate and Consultant, an Accelerator. XR is kind of a term for virtual and augmented reality. So I’ve dabbled in some of that too. I’ve ran the Illegally Sighted YouTube channel for the past, oh, 10 plus years. And I also, like I said, have worked with AAA, indie and app developers to make their games and apps more accessible to people with disabilities, focusing more on blind and visually impaired gamers. Awesome. Thank you so much.

JAMES RATH: And just to kind of get into our first question, which will be for everyone, we’ll kind of go down the list of Jenna, Ross, and Jesse. I want to just ask you, because I know for myself, gaming accessibility has not really been a topic of discussion for, I’d say, a larger community like it is today. For, you know, if you look back six, seven years ago, and I feel like a lot of that started around the time when The Last of Us Part II was in development. I got to work on that game myself. And it really, I think, did a lot for the industry, but, you know, it’s not the end-all, be-all. And it’s not the, it’s not always the example for every game based on, you know, different kinds of accessibility needs. So I want to just start off by just, you know, asking what inspired you to focus on accessible gaming and getting in this space?

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: So am I going first?

JAMES RATH: Yeah, sorry. Okay, go ahead, Jenna. Take it away.

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: Also, I forgot to mention during my intro that I am sighted. So I am the one blemish upon this. Upon this lovely panel, but. So my journey getting into accessible gaming was: I started contract writing for DVW several years ago. Turned out I had a bit of a knack for it and some in-depth knowledge into video games. So now I get to tell my parents all those hours that I wasted, quote unquote, playing video games growing up. Look at me now. I get to use it for my job. It was through the encouragement of, you know, other people in the blind gaming community, which is very supportive and very close-knit. People like Sightless Combat, like Ross, and the late amazing Brandon Cole all encouraged me to like actually get into this as a career. In fact, it was Brandon’s recommendation letter that put me in contact with my now boss, Rhys Lloyd. So I can never thank him enough for that. But now it’s been so immensely rewarding over the years that I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. How about you, Ross?

ROSS MINOR: Yeah, so in terms of like the roots of where I got started, it was just when I was a kid. Like I always loved playing video games, but, you know, as many people listening probably know, you know, you’re not always born sighted. I was blinded from like a traumatic event when I was eight. And so, you know, that was around 2006. That’s when Pokémon was huge, still is. And I was no different than any other kid. I wanted to play Pokémon. And so pretty much through sheer brute force, I taught myself to play Pokémon and memorized all the Pokémon cries and the attack sounds and the maps and things like that. But it’s interesting because I’m not the only blind person who has done that because as I grew older and got connected with like these online blind gaming communities, I learned that many blind people did this when they were younger. And so I began in high school like posting on YouTube because I did like Ask Me Anything on Reddit or like people will ask you questions and you answer them. And I just casually mentioned that I played video games, and everyone’s like heads exploded. They’re like, ‘How do you play video games?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, wow, like many people want to learn about this.’ And then once I, you know, like I mentioned earlier, once I started posting those videos, then I had blind people reaching out to me saying, ‘How do you play this game? I didn’t know I could play this game.’ And so I could see that there’s very much a demand for it. But again, I didn’t, I didn’t really know how to quote unquote make a career out of that or like monetize that if that makes sense. I was like, an advocacy is a lot of work. And so it was just something I continued to advocate for, but it was really an uphill battle. It was very discouraging and demoralizing until The Last of Us came out. Cause I, you know, I can only speak for myself, but it was like a brush of fresh, brush of fresh air, breath of fresh air. And, a lot of that was because of James’ work, Brandon’s work on The Last of Us. And I, it was a breath of fresh air because I was like, oh wow, like developers actually are listening. I can’t tell you how many emails and DMs I sent and developers responding, ‘Hey, we’ll look into it.’ But when The Last of Us came out, it showed what could really be done and, and how well the game did. It won multiple awards because of its accessibility features, multiple disabled content creators posting about it. And that’s what really, really got me into consulting full-time. Like I was in the Paralympics at the time and like the pandemic hit. And so like everything was shut down and I just was like, you know, this is what I want to do. You know, they say like, whatever the saying is, you know, do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s how it feels to me.

JAMES RATH: I love that. And Jesse, what about you?

JESSE ANDERSON: How, what got you started? Sure. Well, I’ve been gaming all my life. Uh, I grew up back. And the Atari 2600 days. Cause yeah, I’m kind of old. Uh, but, uh, the NES is where I really got hooked on gaming. That’s where I really just like, wow. It’s just so amazing at what you could do with games. Um, you know, and then just kind of keeping track of like, you know, as I was playing games going forward, kind of keeping track of like, you know, oh, these types of games are easier for me to play. These are harder for me to play just kind of passively, not really, you know, documenting anything, but just sort of like, oh, this is what I find to be really helpful. This is what I. Really like that games do, but I didn’t go really any deeper than that. Um, fast forward to 2012, where a friend of mine and I were on an online, uh, Minecraft server that he had created and we had, we have just been messing around, making all kinds of, uh, cool creations, you know, and YouTube and gaming were really starting to be a thing then. And there were some tools that free tools that had come out. I’m like, well, you know, rather than just sharing it with each other, I could try this YouTube thing. Just for the heck of it. Um, and I put up a few videos, uh, touring of, you know, the, the different projects that we had done, but then beyond that, I started like, well, let’s, um, you know, what can I do to set my channel apart from everybody else? And so I just started, uh, doing these videos of taking a look at a game as a low vision slash legally blind gamer. And that worked out pretty well, but then in 2015, uh, I have to shout out another, uh, amazing person, Sir Ian of Hamilton, uh, Ian Hamilton. I attended one of his sessions at the CSUN conference in California, and we got to chatting a little bit after the session and that guy is like the original when it comes to like game accessibility, uh, the amount of people that he’s gotten, you know, like I was doing it sort of already, but kind of just pretty low key, but he gave me some ideas, got me some connections, and I just really kind of ramped things up to a whole different level, uh, after that. And so that’s what I released, you know, taking, uh, the video’s accessibility, uh, more seriously streamed for a few years, uh, kind of taking a little hiatus from that cause they have so much going on, but then also just starting to work with like mobile app developers, game developers, uh, indie developers, uh, even some AAA developers and things like that, you know, I mean, I’ve played audio games in the past. Because they were a thing, you know, in the, in the nineties and two thousands, but they were, you know, I love the fact that we’re getting now a lot more mainstream game accessibility too. So that’s kind of been my background, I guess. Awesome.

JAMES RATH: Thank you. Uh, I want to circle back on that audio game thing here in a moment, but, um, Jenna, I do want to ask audio descriptions are a very key component when it comes to making cinema and TV shows accessible for people who are blind or have low vision. But could you talk about how. This is coming into the gaming space because when I was working on Spider-Man two and they told me all the descriptions were on the radar and then I actually got to like, listen to it and, and play it and play test it with that. It, it made a difference for me. Can you, can you talk about from your perspective, some of these successful projects you’ve got to work on with that?

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: Yeah, for sure. Um, so like you said, audio description has been pretty well established in TV and film, but in video games, there’s always going to be new stuff and new rules that we need to, that we need to think through. So for those who are. Unfamiliar with the structure of video games, usually what happens is it will be, uh, interspersing gameplay with what are called cinematics. Gameplay is where you are in control and you get to do something to progress. Cinematics are where you have succeeded or failed. And the game is sort of showing you like a little mini-movie of what comes next. And for the most part, the games that we have worked on, we got to audio describe the cinematics. So those crucial story beats. Where, where you wouldn’t really be able to follow along with what was going on without those cinematics. So you, of course, mentioned Spider-Man 2, which I think is the longest, like the most amount of cut scenes that we’ve ever worked on in a game, in I think it’s six or seven different languages as well, um, that was probably the most extensive scope that we’ve gotten to work on yet, but most recently we also had a Star Wars Outlaws release with audio description, first Ubisoft game, first Star Wars game. And we had the Chaos Reigns expansion for Mortal Kombat one, which is also fully blind accessible and all of the story and the fatalities and, uh, and super moves are all audio described. So it’s a mix of keeping things immersive and making sure all of those crucial story moments are adequately conveyed, but it can also serve a functional purpose to give you the information that you need to potentially progress through it when control is given back to you.

JAMES RATH: Awesome. Cool. Thank you for detailing that. I know that a lot goes into, and when you talk about the different languages too, like how crucial it is to make access, not just in our own native tongue here in the States, but, um, in other parts of the world or other, um, you know, English second language speakers. So totally agree. Thank you for sharing that insight. Now, Jesse, I wanted to kind of, speaking of sound, let’s go talk about audio games just real quick. Um, you had mentioned audio games on like iOS and Android mobile games. Yeah. If, if someone’s never interacted with an audio game before, could you just kind of describe, uh, in short, like what that experience, that gameplay experience is like?

JESSE ANDERSON: Sure. Absolutely. Um, before I do, I just have to give a shout out to the Mortal Kombat, uh, fatalities. Cause those are just incredibly, like they’re amazing.

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: They’re so funny.

JESSE ANDERSON: But, but, um, yeah, back to your question, um, audio. So audio games typically, um, are games that are played with no visuals whatsoever. Whatsoever. So, um, typically they’ve been, uh, I played them early on as a computer game. Like sometimes you would find text-based games that you would use with a screen reader. I remember doing that in like the late eighties, early nineties. Yep. Um, but then you had, but then you had, yeah, even single-player games, but then you had like actual audio games. So maybe a, a side-scrolling platform or like the Super Mario Brothers series. There’s been a few of those. Um, there’s been some kind of like, you know, exploration-type of games and there’s all kinds of different styles of games. Basically you put headphones on and the audio is in such a way that it is, um, presented in a really, what’s the word I’m looking for? Like the stereo, the stereo, um, design of it is so like you can hear if something’s happening. If something is more like ahead of you or behind you or even left or right, you can kind of have all your keys for different things. Yeah. It’s really spatial is really important. And what I like is, is that, you know, we have these audio games that were designed primarily for blind and low vision users. Um, but now these things are being adapted or adopted into, uh, more mainstream games as well.

JAMES RATH: That’s awesome. Any, uh, audio games that you can just name? Off the top of your head, that came out in recent years that you, you recommend folks check out?

JESSE ANDERSON: Um, yeah, there’s been a few, um, a couple that I really wish were still available. I really, really miss the something else games, uh, Audio Defense, Papa Sangre, and The Nightjar. Um, but as far as ones that are currently available, there is one that I’ve been playing a little bit of recently, uh, Periphery Synthetic. It’s kind of this really, uh, cool audio exploration game. Um, there is a, uh, session. I don’t know this year’s, uh, Game Accessibility Conference and it was really interesting. That is a good one. Um, and a project that I have been, uh, proud to be a small part of is adapting the original 1993 Doom, working with a mod developer to make one, basically my favorite game of all time that I’ve been playing visually the last 30 years. It is now largely accessible to blind players. That’s awesome. Sweet. So yeah, really love it.

JAMES RATH: Thank you. And Ross, I want to ask you, uh, so when it comes to say being someone who’s totally blind and playing a 3D action adventure game, what accessibility features are you looking for that developers have implemented recently that have made those types of experiences accessible?

ROSS MINOR: Yeah. So great question. Um, outside of that specific job. Genre, I always tell people, like not overcomplicate things and like what specific accessibility features your game needs for blind people. I always tell them that there are typically three things you should always start with to make a game accessible. And that is screen readers, navigation, assistance, and audio cues for when certain events happen in the game, um, screen readers to read all the texts and navigation systems to your point, to navigate these 3D environments and all of these. These have been implemented in so many incredible ways, um, throughout these like triple A and indie games that have been made accessible. Um, so for navigation assistance, for example, um, we see some great things done starting with the loss of us too. Of course, you know, that game can be completed from beginning to end by totally blind person without any help. Um, and the game just does a great job of keeping you on that golden path, so to say, so you’re always going in the right direction. However, there are some like caveats to this and that you don’t have a ton of agency when doing it, um, but we’ve seen improvements upon that. So in Spider-Man 2, um, it kind of works the same, you know, it, it points you in the direction of where you need to go, but since it has open-world elements, you can select a position on the map where you want to go, and then it will start guiding you toward that because the loss of us is much more linear game. Um, And so Spider-Man did that really, really well. And then also implemented like this point of interest indicator where it plays a sound and it’ll like click faster, it’ll click faster. The closer you get to it, it will sound muffled. If there’s like an, a physical obstacle in the way, et cetera, like it’s really, really advanced. Um, and so I think the next big step is to make a truly open-world game line accessible. And that’s something I’m really passionate about and want to work on. Because, I mean, there, there are so many different games you could do. Like, I’ve always, always, always wanted to play Skyrim. And like, I’m not saying that Skyrim is going to come out and have navigation assistance, but you know, just a fantasy game of that, of that caliber. I’ve always wanted to play. But then we’ve seen great, great advancements in screen reader technology as well. But Diablo has an amazing screen reader. Forza Motorsport has amazing screen reader where you can both these games, you know, you can just about adjust the speed, the voice you’re using, um, the, the pitch and more. And then I also quickly want to give a shout out to Diablo’s navigation assistance feature, which came out about a month ago. Where now there’s navigation systems across the open overworld map, which again is like open world. This one, I don’t wanna say it’s easier to implement, but you know, it’s like a, a top-down view of your character. So you’re not, uh, you don’t have this changing camera perspective, but still. Just. Just a feat of engineering. Um, and so more and more open world games, like we’re, we’re getting there, you know, it’s not fully open world, but we’re, we’re taking really big steps in, in just a few short years that navigation systems has come mainstream. So it’s really exciting.

JAMES RATH: And with that said, what is, what have you seen is like the most effective communication channel for community feedback, um, to developers?

ROSS MINOR: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, it’s so difficult because a while ago, I probably would’ve said social media, but social media is in a really awkward place for blind gamers right now. Um, you know, we all know, I guess I have to call it X where that’s at with accessibility. Okay. Twitter. No, no, it’s Twitter. It’s Twitter. It’s Twitter. Always will be. Um, so like Twitter, unfortunately, even after the accessibility team was laid off, it’s still the most accessible, but people are leaving that platform in waves. And so a bunch of black people go to Mastodon. Which is great. You can find a bunch of black people there, but not many developers. Instagram is inherently inaccessible unless people add alt texts to their pictures, pick talk, same, same difference. Although there is a massive black community on TikTok. I was surprised to learn a few months ago that Gen Z blind folks exist. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So, um, I would still unfortunately say Twitter, but more and more studios are having accessibility portals you can go through. So whether that be an email or submitting a bug report, like there’s an accessibility flag, things like that, um, really go a long way, but really, if you want to get something out there known, you’ve got to interact with the community in some way, whether that be like reaching out to someone like me, like I’m happy to help signal boost accessibility barriers you are having, like, like that’s, that’s half of my job is kind of help advocating for, for people who may not have as much support as I do. Presence, but then also I started on YouTube, just making videos about how I play video games. Like you can do the same thing too. People search that stuff all the time. Developers come across that all the time. And so the more you post, the more you ask for it, the more studios will see that demand. I mean, they already have, otherwise they wouldn’t be creating all these accessibility features, but they are because there’s a demand and the more blind people realize that they can play video games, the more, uh, those changes will happen at a faster pace, in my opinion.

JAMES RATH: Thank you, Ross. Now we’re kind of getting into the home stretch here with time and everything, but I do want to ask, uh, Jesse, what are your predictions moving forward for the future of accessibility in gaming? And, um, I’m going to have one more follow-up for, uh, Ross and Jenna here in a second, but if you can just kind of like what you’re looking forward to for the future of accessible gaming.

JESSE ANDERSON: Sure. Yeah. Um, there’s a few different things. Um, like I said, I really like where accessibility, how far we’ve come. I would say even since like 2015 or so, uh, there are things that I thought we wouldn’t have seen for quite some time yet, but, uh, that we’re, we’re seeing a lot of progress. There’s still a long way to go. Um, but I think one of the things that is starting to happen and I would love to see happen quickly is, um, the game engines themselves, the tools that are used to build all of these games, a couple of, uh, really commonly used ones are unity. And. Other. Unreal right now. Um, it’s great that everyone is, uh, the developers are adding these accessibility features, but it seems like they have to start from square one all the time. And so I kind of compare it to every time I want to write a word document or something, I have to code the word processor from scratch first. Yeah. And so, you know, once these game engines include native accessibility into their engines, you know, of course, the developers will have to modify it for their unique content of their game, but I think that will make things a lot easier and, uh, make people more receptive to doing it. The other thing that I’m really, really intrigued about is, um, AI and how that can be used, um, whether it’s in a game itself or, uh, as a tool to assist with accessibility from the player’s perspective. Like. I’m amazed in the last couple of. A year or in the last year or so. Apps like Be My Eyes, uh, is one of my favorites and there’s, you know, there’s a, a version of it for mobile, but there’s also a version of it for Windows. And I’ve used it in the past to have it really describe, you know, complicated graphical things, uh, whether that’s something for work. Uh, I’ve used it to actually read comic books, which is pretty cool, but where I think it’s really going to take off is. We’re closely getting to the point where, um, instead of having to stop and take a picture, have it described; take a picture; describe kind of going back and forth once we get like live monitoring and live conversation. If I’m, let’s say running by my eyes or a similar app on my PC, I could, you know, just say, turn it on and have my microphone on and I could just be playing a game. Something happens in that game. Maybe a tutorial comes up or something happens in the game. And say, oh, what just happened? Or what does that say? Um, I could even see things where, you know, we’re using generative AI to, you know, write and recommend things, you know, just conversation bots right now. But what if you gave it a source from like a game walkthrough or game FAQs where it’s like, oh, there’s a lot known about this game already and say, okay, I’m going to play this game. Here’s a walkthrough on it. I can’t really see well enough to get through certain aspects of this game. And you just having a live sort of conversation with this AI, almost like you would a sighted person, to help get you through a game. And that could work for, you know, upcoming games. But I also see a lot of potential for maybe blind and visually impaired players to maybe get access to games that are already out, that have been out for, you know, however long that we’re not natively accessible. So if there’s no mod available for it, that could be another avenue. And I find that really, really exciting. And I’m eager to test and do videos on that kind of functionality. So that’s a couple of things I look forward to.

JAMES RATH: It’s a great thing you bring up too. And, you know, it’s a whole other panel that hopefully we can do in the future because there’s so much there. Because, you know, there’s like the ethics of AI and then there’s the, you know, within the creative space, but the benefits of accessibility for it. And I know Seeing AI just released a feature that lets you run MP4 videos into the app and it will play the video, but it will pause occasionally for it to do an AI description of what is happening in it. And it’s, it’s really interesting. That’s new to me. I’m about to go try it out. It’s just launched. So it’s in the metadata.

JESSE ANDERSON: Yeah, just launched. And there’s another one called Pixie Bot that does a kind of a similar thing with YouTube videos. Yeah. That’s cool.

JAMES RATH: So with that said though, if one last kind of quick, real quick, one key change that you’d like to see in the gaming industry, like one sentence. Jenna and then Ross, I’d love to hear from both of you.

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, what I want to see is, uh, developers not asking me an audio describer how little can we get away with making this comprehensible and accessible? I want to see a developer ask how much can we do because games are much more than just the story, cinematics, and a couple of animations. There are, there’s a lot of visual stuff in games that would do, would be really, really awesome to describe. So I want to see a developer push the envelope and increase the scope. So I want to see a developer push the envelope and increase the scope of audio description, massively.

ROSS MINOR: And Ross. Um, yeah, to quickly touch on that. I, I wanted to say this before I forgot just yesterday. I, um, or a couple of months ago, I met a blind friend at like a film festival and I went over his place yesterday and we played Mortal Kombat one and Spider-Man two. Um, and he loved the descriptions. I just had to point that out. He’s like, oh my gosh, Omniman’s amazing. Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so just highlighting exactly what Jenna is saying. Like just how much they add to the game. Um, for me, I’m going to slightly expand on what Jesse said and that, um, I think with engines like Unreal and Unity, not only do there need to be more, uh, tools for developers. So, uh, you know, like plugins for text-to-speech or font scaling, subtitles, et cetera, but the engines themselves. And I think like, this is what Jesse was saying, but I just want to make the distinction need to be accessible themselves because I know. Like through the audio games community, there have been so many talented blind developers. Um, but they can’t work with these engines because they’re just not accessible. And I’m sure again, if they were all of a sudden, you’re going to have all these blind developers come out of the woodworks and, and want to build some incredible games. Secondly, I really would like to see more, uh, uh, uh, early slash, just in-depth positions at games. Sure. Studios, whether even like full-time, part-time, or even contracting, I really want disabled people to be involved even sooner on a deeper level. Um, so what I mean by this is like a lot of the times, um, consulting consists of like workshops and panels, and those are like really great for educating and, uh, uh, you know, sharing experiences. Um, but I think more disabled consultants like myself and others need to help design and test these prototypes, uh, as opposed to like saying what you want and then having developers like create it and then show you the end product. Um, they definitely got your feedback, but having to kind of like tweak these details as they’re being created, I think can result in like a great product. And to an extent, like many games have already done that, like The Last of Us, I feel that was the case. Um, but other times not so much. Yeah.

JAMES RATH: Ross, thank you so much. Sorry to cut it short. We are literally, there’s so much more we could say on this whole topic and, and hopefully there will be so many more discussions and hopefully, you know, SiteTech Global will continue, uh, to have a category of panels with this in the future. And I just want to say thank you to our great panelists, Jenna, Jesse, and Ross for all the great insight and, you know, let’s keep the conversation going beyond this conference.

JENNA “JENNISSARY”: And thank you, James, for being such a wonderful moderator.

JESSE ANDERSON: Thank you, everybody. And thank you for the conversation. Thanks for inviting us.

ROSS MINOR: Yeah. All right.

JESSE ANDERSON: All right. We’ll pass it back. Thank you.

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