[games_access] Appropriate Interfaces for Blind Gamers

[Chad Philip Johnson]

Hello all,

I was reading an article this evening on Gamasutra about the game /Ear 
Monsters 
/(http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BrianSchmidt/20130617/194489/Making_Ear_Monsters_Developing_a_3D_Audio_Game.php). 
The developer was making what he expected to be a straightforward 
accessibility experience for blind gamers on smartphones and tablets.  
Initial feedback was not as positive as he expected because he didn't 
account for players that held the device in unconventional ways.  Here's 
the relevant snippet:

/One other accessibility issue was reported by several blind players who 
said that all the sounds were backwards; when they tapped on the right 
side, they’d hear their attack from the left.  It turns out that the 
code I’d added to detect orientation and flip the game—which, 
ironically, I had added in specifically so that visually impaired gamers 
would always have the correct orientation!— was too clever by half.  A 
normal sighted player will typically hold their device in their hands, 
with a tilt towards themselves.  And that’s how we tested Ear Monsters. 
However, it turns out that many visually impaired players played the 
game either laying their device on a flat table, or even in their laps, 
with a slight tilt //*/away /*//from them.  In that case, the game would 
frequently rotate itself away from the player, upside down. And when 
they tried to turn around their device to fix it, it would rotate away 
again!  That is also being addressed by fixing the orientation to one 
specific landscape orientation, which is common for iOS games./

This reminded me of a blues-rock guitar player name Jeff Healey.  He 
became blind in his infancy and then started learning music and the 
guitar shortly afterwards.  He developed a highly unorthodox way of 
holding and playing his instrument:  he would lay the guitar in his lap 
and place his fingers in a downward position--not unlike pressing keys 
on a piano.  The video in the following link shows how he accomplished 
this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIkOaTVu8uM.

Anyway, I noticed a correlation between the two and thought I would 
throw that out there in case anybody else found it interesting. Perhaps 
this is a more natural way for people to interface with input devices 
that have flat surfaces.

-- 
Chad Philip Johnson
Anacronist Software

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