2019-02-12 01:26:00

Well said, Ian. Much agreed.

2019-02-12 02:43:54 (edited by ianhamilton_ 2019-02-12 10:45:26)

@orin about apex legends... They went way beyond the legal requirement, but their effort has been on features useful for deaf gamers

2019-02-12 08:47:08

Well said Ian. Big thumbs up for post 25.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2019-02-12 12:28:04 (edited by defender 2019-02-13 03:39:04)

Hmm, Ian do you think that low vision people would be willing to use voice VS resized high contrast text? I mean most I've encountered wouldn't prefer it at all...
I also don't think that this game proves (conclusively) that the industry is willing to move beyond the base CVAA requirements just because one big name did it, that seems like jumping the gun to me.
What did you think of the XAC, was that a big turning point in your opinion or mostly just hype, I thought that even with the very expensive third party devices them selves (not really MS's fault) the effort to make the thing still look cool and the amount of time spent on the packaging in order to make it able to be set up independently was very thoughtful.
The large amount of ports and the comparatively very low price of the unit it's self would definitely be huge selling points for me if I needed one as well.


Anyway I agree with everything else you said basically, and I too am especially excited about how this will act as a tech demo for other studios. Carrying the weight of the Ubisoft name will surely get more attention.
I am also happily surprised by how much money they are putting into this and the fact that they are going beyond the minimum. I did not expect that so soon.

2019-02-12 18:27:14

No, I'd say it does not prove conclusively, but I think it now gives things much more merit, a thing that advocates can send to developers as a valid example.

2019-02-12 22:30:56 (edited by ianhamilton_ 2019-02-12 22:34:18)

@29 @30 I used the word "all" - what I said was it proves conclusively that the idea that devs would all rather dump comms functionality than implement CVAA requirements (as some people have argued pretty strongly would be the case) is wrong. Division's implementation conclusively proves that smile

The next year should be a very exciting time. We will see some devs don't care and would rather drop comms, we'll see some devs would rather drop comms for a while until they can see what other people are doing, we'll see some who are willing to take their chances and ignore it (not a good idea if you're a big company, Anthem already has a number of people filing issues with the FCC over it and the game isn't even released yet), some  people who are meeting the bare minimum to meet compliance, and some people who take it as an opportunity to go beyond communication accessibility and do what they can do ensure a good experience for their players.

I've spoken devs who fall into every one of those groups. As time goes on and uncertainty is removed and the lenience over games being part through dev at Jan 1st falls away and tools and middleware and examples of what other devs are doing become available more devs will move further along the scale, I have no doubt of that at all.

@29 re: low vision & TTS, yep absolutely, here's an example:

"The ability to zoom, increase text size and clearer layouts on menus and maps shouldn’t be a difficult adjustment for most developers. The dream would be an interactive screen reader for menus, maps and dialogue."

https://caneadventures.blog/2019/01/18/ … on-masher/

Different people have different needs and preferences, so the key is to offer options.

And re: adaptive controller, Shawn Layden (head of PlayStation games) about an hour ago got up to give his keynote speech at the DICE summit, and used it to give praise to the adaptive controller, that's a pretty big deal. A video about it was aired at superbowl, educating 100s of millions of people about accessibility; even T-Pain, the US Surgeon General and Cher were all tweeting about it afterwards.

Shawn: https://t.co/fkpQFSfSTm
Celebs: https://twitter.com/ianhamilton_/status … 7573328897

Even if not one single person actually used the device it still would have changed not just the industry but public perception of disability and accessibility.

As far as third party devices go some people won't need any as you can use it in conjunction with a regular controller, so if all you need to do is replace a couple of buttons (e.g. triggers) you can use the two big buttons on the device and you're done. If those buttons don't work for you or you need to replace more, the cheapest commercially available buttons are about $20, or if you're able to operate a flight stick you can plug one of those in and that gives you an analogue stick plus 8 buttons on it for $30.

You can even make your own inputs, all it cares about is something that closes a circuit. I've played FIFA using a pair of headphones that had the earpieces chopped off and touching the two wires together.

2019-02-13 03:46:55

interesting info, thanks.
So I see that what you meant is that this proves not (all) devs will do the bare minimum, not that most of them will go above and beyond, at least not as quickly.
For the XAC I was talking about dome switches, blow tubes, things like that. They get really expensive...
I didn't know that it came with a couple buttons already though.

2019-02-13 03:59:28

Yeah I don't know if you've ever used a NES controller but it's a bit like a giant one of those... On the top surface it has a d-pad, two large buttons, and the usual Xbox/view/menu buttons and a button to switch between profiles. Then along the back it has all the 3.5mm jacks for switches, and on either side a USB port for hooking up analogue sticks to.

I haven't come across the term "dome switch" before, what's that?

2019-02-13 08:53:25

Thanks for the great links in post 31. I love how the guy is talking about the Playstation accessibility options, but don't mention the TTS function at all. Lol. this is yet an other great way to tell others that the TTS function is not available to everyone, but only people in the US. big_smile
I really like his great way of describing things...

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2019-02-13 17:05:06

Maybe you'd know them as crush switches? the rubber ones where you push on them and they bounce back up.

2019-02-14 00:55:18

Pillow switch / gel switch maybe?

If so they are still relatively cheap compared to proximity / blink / squeeze / sip-puff

2019-02-14 08:59:04

Hi.
Since Apex Legends got mentioned in this topic, I'll just take a moment to talk about the game.
I took the time to figure out the accessibility settings in the game, since it's free.
The only accessibility setting for us is some voice instructions, which tells how to access the chat. However, you need to know how to activate the accessibility setting.
The menus are impossible for us to navigate, because you use the left joystick like a mouse, where you need to place the cursor on the menu item you wanna activate. It makes a sound when you focus on an icon, but since you can move it very far away from the icons, they are impossible to navigate.  got sighted help to check out the accessibility settings, and the menus were even very difficult to navigate with sighted help. So, no need for waisting more time on this game.
In Apex Legend, we see a great example of developers who only implement the settings because they are forced to do it, and not because they care about accessibility at all.
For you who are making video demonstrations etc. where you talk about accessibility, this game can be an important example for you to show where accessibility and menu navigation totally fails for blind people. The game is free, so it would be great to use the game to show those examples.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2019-02-14 12:11:21

Well well well, division 2 was beaten to it. Crackdown 3 launches tomorrow and has text to speech for menus, using the Xbox TTS API.

2019-02-14 16:49:23

hey stirlock i sent you a pm regarding diablo 3 cause i had questions. always wanted to play ubisoft games. I'm not going to get my hopes up but the menu accessibility is a cool step forward.

2019-02-14 20:34:07

ianhamilton_ wrote:

Well well well, division 2 was beaten to it. Crackdown 3 launches tomorrow and has text to speech for menus, using the Xbox TTS API.

Is Crackdown 3 playable at any point accept for the accessible menus?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2019-02-14 20:51:09

I don't know,I've never played a crackdown game. Sightlesskombat is the person to ask, he has a preview copy

2019-02-14 21:18:41

@40Unfortunately not as it stands, though I'd argue there's potential for improvements post-launch.  There is lock-on aiming though so that could be useful in terms of easier co-op runs (co-op is online only from what I've seen, though I haven't had a chance to play with that yet).  In terms of multiplayer, it's kind of a mixed bag at the moment given that party support is coming post-launch and there aren't many (if any) cues to work with aside from those of other players on the map.

However, the potential of accessible menus is certainly evident and I look forward to seeing where Microsoft takes this in the future.

Regards,
Sightless Kombat.
***If you wish to refer to me in @replies, use Sightless***

2019-02-15 08:56:37

@Sightless Kombat: Thanks for your answer. Have you tried the campaign mode to see if that is playable?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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