2018-07-15 08:21:11

Hi everyone,

My name is Ronny and I'm doing a PhD at The University of Melbourne, Australia. I'm researching ways to make full 3D games accessible to people with visual impairment and as part of my research I first want to know more about how you guys play games. Even though I myself am vision impaired and use screen reading software for certain things, I'm pretty new to audiogames, that's why I decided to ask for your help.

I've created a Google form with some questions and it would be great if you guys could help me out filling it in. This is the link for it: link to survey

The survey should take 15 to 20 minutes to fill in, and I tested it with NVDA and Firefox.

Thank you in advance to all those who fill in the survey!

P.S. if this is not the right place to post this topic, please admins feel free to move it.

2018-07-15 15:28:32

Hi Ronny.

I'm afraid I'm having problems with your survey.

Firstly, I cannot fill in the country box for some reason (when I click on the list nothing happens), but crytically I'm not sure what you mean.

You state in this topic that you want information about audiogames, and yet all  the questions on your form revolve around "video games" Unfortunately, the two terms are not interchangeable and refer to different types of computer games.

this site is primarily about audiogames, that is games based on sound that are either self voicing or output to screen readers and are usually specifically design for the audiogames community, , so all the news you'll see on the site, and the database concern audiogames.

Some audiogames also have graphics, though this is rare, and often the graphics are more a place holder than real 3D graphics of the sort you'd see on a modern console.

Though there have been one or two audiogames for consoles such as sound voyager on the gameboy advanced, these are rare indeed, most audiogames are produced by independent developers for PC, Ios or Android.

There are then  textual games that can be played with a screen reading program, either due to a few access fixes by the developer, or due to inherent accessibility. Examples of this sort of game include browser based rpgs, muds, gamebooks and interactive fiction, and you'll also find examples mentioned in the database, not to mention some games for Ios and android too.

There are also then blind people who play actual video games, that is games with full graphics that play on a console or on a pc of the same sort a sighted person would play.
this is done via a combination of sound memorisation, learning menus and occasional use of screen readers, but tends to be a much more difficult  prospect and not the same experience to what sighted people have when playing a video game. This is why, while discussion of mainstream video games often occurs on this site, we don't include news  them or write them up on the db.

So, which category of games are you actually interested in with this survey, since the results will be naturally different for each depending upon the person and their preferences.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-15 15:46:29

I got the impression that the survey uses "video games" as a catch-all for all three, since the last section is about the game you spend the most time playing, regardless of category.
The country list is a bit weird. In Safari, it made a (very long) list appear, rather than entering a form field. I went down to the next heading and went up from there, which you'll probably want to do, as they're in alphabetical order.

看過來!
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2018-07-15 16:49:29

@Dark, the country list worked fine for me. I just pressed nvda +space to open it, tab, used letters and arrows to navigate to the right country, pressed space to select it and nvda +space to close the list. I'm using NVDA and the last version of Firefox.

Yes, I definitely left the forum. Mhm. Why would you have any doubt?
Code 7 tips: https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4010 … or-code-7/
Don't forget to be awesome!

2018-07-16 02:47:05

Hi everyone, thanks for your answers. Yeah, to open the Country list it works like @mayana says with NVDA+space and leters and arrows to find your country. And yeah @Dark you're right, I'm using the term videogame very loosely, thinking to make the survey inclusive of people with low vision who play videogames using magnifying software, or only the sound cues included in the game even if it's a maintream game.

One example that comes to mind is from a Minecraft forum where I read about a person with low vision who enjoyed "playing" Minecraft with their friend even though the friend was doing all the playing and the person with visual impairment said they enjoyed just listening to the sounds of the game. So in a way I kinda think of this experience as playing a videogame, even though it wasn't exactly an audiogame, and even though another person was doing the playing.

2018-07-16 10:52:36

Hmmmm Ronald, in that case if your talking about any type of game whether audio, graphical or textual, I'd suggest using the term "computer game" instead of "video game" as "video" automatically implies graphics, and also tacitly implies game from a mainstream developer.

I did try nvda space on the country list for some reason it didn't open for me, I'll give it another try, though I admit some of the questions will be difficult as partly due to the job I do for this site, partly due to personal inclination what game I "spend the most time playing" can vary quite a lot at different points big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-17 02:04:18

Thank you for the advice @Dark!

2018-07-18 07:43:01

I filled it out, I noticed their were a decent amount of typos but it was understandable.
I also made sure to say it was okay to contact me for a followup.

2018-07-18 09:06:24

hello. Ok the main objetive to games, the graphric games are for game consoles, although you can get audiogames that if you've got no site at all, like me for instants sad then you can disable the graphics. Or you can get audio games with sounds only. And @dark i'd love to try swamp but i can't find it for i wanted to play the game but couldn't find anyone to help