Topic by karate25 2015-01-02 14:40:40

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Hello everyone. I wasn't exactly sure where to post this topic, but I saw the developers section here so I figured why not. If I've made a mistake, please by all means let me know. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm known on here as karate25, and I'm a totally blind gamer since the age of 4 years. I'm a very avid gamer and love everything about video games. The one drawback to the current video game systems is that they do not speak, and the way they're built today they're just as complex as computers. What I'd like to see happen is for someone brave out there that thinks they can, tackle this issue of video game consoles not speaking. I'm not saying that it should make all games accessible that are made for that particular console since this is up to the individual developers themselves, but at least come up with some sort of piece of hardware equipment that provides speech output, or some sort of downloadable software like a jaws attitude that provides speech through the television or headphones or which ever output device you're using for sound. At least make it possible for us to set up the console with connecting to the internet like they do today so we can download content and then access our downloaded content. Again, I may be completely off my rocker here and you folks are probably thinking this guy's nuts or something, and if so I apologize in advance, but gosh darn it, I just want to play video games like the rest of the world and enjoy them without sighted help. I even got a pair of high end headphones for Christmas for my new PS4 so I could play video games and listen to them easier. Have a wonderful day everyone, and I would love any and all input on this subject. I just want to get a feel for what you folks think. I should also make mention that I can't code my way out of a home security system, but if this ever gets built, you have a very willing and able beta tester for such a product. Let me know your oppinions and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-01-02 16:00:48

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It's a nice thought.  For every console I am aware of, save perhaps with jailbroken hardware and almost certainly not even then, it is technologically impossible.  At least without the help of whoever manufactures the console in the first place.  Presuming jailbroken hardware, doing this is probably about 10 times more complex than the desktop screen reader because literally the entire process is assembly hacking.  You'd need the source code for the OS.

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Reply by frastlin 2015-01-02 17:52:29

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Perhaps if one could install programs on their console this would be possible, but to my knowledge, you can't install anything, it is all hard disks. If you could install stuff, you would then need to be able to run 2 programs at once.
But a game could add in self-voicing menus.
Otherwise, you would need to contact Microsoft and ask that they add SAPI support into their products or who ever else makes the consoles.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-01-02 18:11:10

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It's worse than that.
An assistive technology requires a large number of operating system services, foremost a huge number of hooks for important events and a not exactly small number of queries.  On top of this, your task is made easier by dynamic loading of libraries (which allows API hooking when all else fails), a service architecture (which lets you start in the first place), and a bunch of other stuff I don't actually know about at the moment.  The advantage of a first party A11y solution is that, in theory, they just make the menus talk; in practice, it's probably not actually that simple and is going to require licensing a TTS engine, something which costs a great deal of money.
Making the console talk is an old idea.  But it simply won't happen any time soon.  The only thing I can think of that would push it through is a large group (i.e. not us, and probably not exclusively blind people either.  Think NFB collaborating with basically everyone) or new legislation and a lawsuit.

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Reply by CAE_Jones 2015-01-02 22:34:19

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Double bind, here.

By which I mean how text is represented.
We're not even at the point of menus, yet. Just the commands that display text on the screen.

Say you want to mod an open source emulator--Those are only really stable up to PS1 at this point, right?--so that, whenever it tries to display text, the data gets sent to a TTS engine. Assume you won't break anything on the hardware emulation level by doing this; text is fairly OS level, right?

How many games or even console operations use a straightforward print function like printf? I'm guessing very few.
Is there some universal function for drawing text? Maybe it isn't used in all games, but it's common enough to be low enough for an emulator to hook? Something like java.awt.Graphics2D.drawString? (I picked that one because it takes plaintext and coordinates as the only parameters.)

I'm honestly not convinced.
But it's not completely hopeless. See Ian Reed's SNES9X mod that can read text in Crono Trigger. The problem, of course, being that this is not generalizable.

When you get to modern consoles, we're pretty much doomed. sad

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Reply by crashmaster 2015-01-03 09:15:32

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Hi karate
have you asked danny about what he thinks of this sort of thing.

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Reply by sightlessHorseman 2015-01-05 13:46:55

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Hi, there is a way on how to get a screen reader on the consoles.
The solution, Talkback!
Yes, you heard me right, the solution is talkback.
A friend of mine tried it on his ps3 and his ps vita. I also tried it myself and was very positivly surprised by the result of the experiment.
It is an older talkback version, so the speach sounds a bit crappy, but it will work if you are tolerating the quality of the speach.
When I asked him how he did that, I can write up a guide in here.
Greetings Moritz.

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Reply by camlorn 2015-01-05 16:04:31 (edited by camlorn 2015-01-05 16:05:55)

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Interesting if true.  But I think there's some sort of misunderstanding going on here.  The PS3 at least is known for running Linux so, if it's jailbroken, it's possible you could get Android going on it.  But these consoles aren't even based on Android to my knowledge, and once you swap the OS you can't play games anymore.  Can you explain further?  This is sounding both way way too good to be true and also technologically impossible.

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Reply by hanif 2015-01-06 16:14:22

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hi simba, I don't beleave that your ps3 and the ps vita could use talkback.
But the downside here may be you can't run or install your ps3 or vita because the change of an OS to android.

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Reply by sightlessHorseman 2015-01-06 22:18:02

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Hi,
@hanif, Think what you want, I dont paticulary care. I have tested it myself, and it worked fine.
@all: As far I understut, you wouldnt instal androit on the console, just take the talkback screenreader. I will ask how it works.

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Reply by jack 2015-07-06 16:24:24

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There's the talkback solution, also as far as I'm aware, the latest beta of the ps4 software already comes with under-construction text to speech. Currently it only works in the online chat room and stuff like that, but it is being improved. It uses a slightly in between compact and premium version of vocalizer Ava.

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Reply by Exodus 2015-07-07 16:00:15

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I'm real skeptical about this also. But eh... if it actually works that would be cool.

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