Blind accessibility

Game Suggestions & Feedback
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Hello players and developers,

It will be long story so sit down, and relax when you’ll read this piece of bad english presentation as I know it’s not fantastic. :slight_smile: I’m doing my best though!

To introduce myself a bit [I hate doing that as I never know what I should to say and how] I’m totally blind from my born. Musician [drummer, harmonica player and singer] from over 15 years, sound designer / engineer. To be completely fair, sound is my world and hearing is a key to everything what I feel and love.
I started playing video games many, many years ago on 8/16/32-bit consoles and until now, where we have high standards and technologies. Playing a game being completely blind is not easy task and maybe even it’s a challenge. Well, challenges are cool! every barier or obstacle in our life is just our limits in our imagination and in our heads. I believe I can and I must break through every limit as I know it’s created only in my mind.
Um… yeah, such a philosophic moment, sorry, this is a day full of reflections! :smiley: Are you bored? hope not but… if yes, just take a breath and everything should be okay. :slight_smile:
So… gaming is my love, hobby and passion. I can’t imagine my life without it and this is why I feels so motivated, why I’m posting this topic and why I managed to do a bit regarding blind accessibility on the gaming scene.

Sadly, there’s small portion of games we, blind gamers can enjoy. Fighters, beat em ups, it’s something what We can play fully, atleast most of the times. Killer instinct is my favourite one and I remember the times when I Played KI on my old SNES. Now, when Killer instinct is coming for PC, I’m so excited!
I hope KI can be extremely accessible for the blind players with just a bit of extra work and I hope it will turn Iron galaxy’s attention as many blind gamers could be more than happy!

So, I’ll try to describe how it could work to be completely accessible game [This is only a way how to do it easily on PC]

Spoken menus: right, this is what We need. The biggest problem when We are playing video game is fact We can’t read the subtitles. It’s more or les searching for something randomly or searching through game FAQs. There’s easy solution to make it fully accessible. Just few lines in code to call the function which will copy every bit of text to the clipboard. This is why I said only for PC as We are using screen readers, apps to read the whole system, applications and so on.
I’ll put the link to the Shoryuken article regarding Skullgirls blind accessibility. I spend few days working together with Mike Z. testing it and I’m happy to say, SG is the first and only one fully accessible fighting game on the market. Here’s the link:
http://shoryuken.com/2014/01/31/mike-mike-z-zaimont-updates-skullgirls-encore-to-enhance-accessibility-for-blind-players/

Easy and working solution, what We want more? nothing, it’s enough and it can gives a lot of enjoyment and smile.

I’ll be more than happy to answer your evey questions and make it creative as much as possible!

Now, I want to thank you for reading this long and boring story. :smiley:
Have a nice day!

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You should talk to @SightlessKombat - he’s also completely blind and has been a regular in this community for some time and is a very competent fighter in his own right (I’ve been able to make it to just within the top 100 and he’s even beaten me a couple of times). :wink:

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Yeah, I know him but my goal is to have just completely accessible game. I’m playing video games and I can learn many things.
That will be just amazing to read menus, everything in dojo, story mode or who you are playing with in the lobbies, who’s there how many wins / looses etc. This is what I love about SG.
I know KI is playable without these extra features as many other fighters but making it fully accessible can open the game for newcomers. Sightlesscombat, me or few others are playing video games from years but there are people who don’t know how and where to start. For example, I haven’t any sighted assistance so I need to lear the game menus on my own. It’s frustrating many times but doable. Ofcourse, I can’t beat the tutorials, can’t browse the movelists ingame, can’t enjoy multi player fully, browse the collection items, see the current XP and game curency.
Hopefully I cleared everything out.

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@GalacticGeekThanks for the mention and the compliment that’s very good of you to think of me as such a good fighter. :smiley:

@PersonBlind Hello and welcome to the forums (I don’t recall seeing you around here before). I understand your passion and drive for making the game more accessible, especially where the PC is concerned - itcan introduce more players to KI as well as allow players familiar with the game to make even more of it than before.

Instead of “spoken menus”, to clarify what the OP is saying about, a better use of terminology would be “clipboard support”. I’ve discussed this before on threads, but I can’t remember if any of them are on the new forums.

I’m glad that it’s not just me who’s interested in opening the game up for more players with no or low vision.

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As a non-blind person, I would like to say i fully support this thread, and hope that these suggestions reach the developers ASAP.

I would even be willing to help by spamming your questions in the chats of the twitch streams and tournaments during developer interviews.

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Sightlesscombat, you can recognise me from many places where I’m as Lirin.

@MrxFlutterShy: Thank you for the comment and everything you can do to share this and help us bring this fantastic game to the blind community!

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Even though it might be considered heavy handed to an extent, that would be very much appreciated - any effort to make this work is much appreciated.

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Thanks for your feedback. Microsoft and Iron Galaxy are on these forums every day. To make sure that you’ve been heard, I’ve passed this thread along.

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Thanks, please, let me know what will happen and no matter if it will be positive or negative. Everything is much better than silence.

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Good to hear, I’ve done my own share of mentioning to various people I’m in contact with from IG/Microsoft

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Hopefully it will move us to something good! I can give my feetback and test things for you if needed as I have experiences working with developers on the accessibility.