Researchers of the University of Reno are currently doing a project in which they're trying to make Guitar Hero accessible for the blind. Guitar Hero is a popular Playstation 2 game in which the player has to play songs on a guitar-shaped controller. The early prototype uses a force-feedback glove which used vibration to let the player know which notes to play and for how long. There are 4 different frets and the notes vary in length on a scale from 1 to 40; which combined creates up to 250 different stimuli. The researchers considered using audio cues, and with regard to the required hardware that would have been a better solution but listening to the music and using audio cues even using a headset with split outputs turned out just too confusing. Each finger of the haptic glove starts buzzing whenever you need to play a note and when it stops you release it. The following video on YouTube shows the first time the system was tested out with a blind person, who had never played Guitar Hero nor guitar before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UwY0vyCXxg (unfortunately without captions or descriptions)
Early tests have shown that modifying the "spatial" resolution of the glove gives much better results. The researchers themselves claim to be able "to play most of the easy songs blind ourselves". Although the system is not yet perfect, it will be continued to be adjusted and tested within the next few weeks. And then keep your fingers crossed that Alex and his team over at Harmonix/MTV will be as enthousiastic as we are !