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Feature: Listen and learn
How Supergiant Games made the hack’n’slash accessible with Hades
Hades is a roguelike dungeon crawler that sees you fight your way through ever shifting levels of the underworld, from wispy shades of the undead to foes of Greek legend, on frantic battlegrounds that can send you to your death in an instant. As a disabled player, oftentimes I don’t have access to kinds of games like Hades. I have a connective tissue disorder that…
Windows 10’s May Update will improve accessibility features for low and no vision users
Microsoft marked Global Accessibility Awareness Day yesterday by announcing plans for improved accessibility features in Windows 10. The listed changes mainly focus on accessibility features for those with low or no vision, including text cursor customisation and quite a few improvements to the Narrator feature. These changes are scheduled as part of the May update for Windows 10.
Xbox Adaptive Controller add-on lets you play Rocket League with a power wheelchair
If you use a power wheelchair in your day-to-day life, you likely use something that looks an awful lot like a gaming joystick to get around. It seems AbleGamers COO, Rocket League fan and wheelchair user Steven Spohn thought so too, and set about trying to bridge that gap. A little bit of hardware tinkering later, and the Freedom Wing Adaptor was born - a…
Microsoft share their accessibility guidelines for the benefit of all developers
Xbox have been doing rather well with accessibility lately. But as well-considered as things like the Adaptive Controller (and Logitech's recently-launched suite of plug-in pads for the thing) are, getting into the game is only half the fight. This week, they released a set of accessibility guidelines which Microsoft say they formed "in partnership with industry experts and members of the gaming and disability community.Dense…
The internet could learn a lot from the VR sign language community
I love the smell of technology bringing people together in the morning. Not in that hollow, Zuckerberguian sense: I'm talking about VR communities where deaf and hearing people hang out and learn VR-adapted sign language. The tech isn't perfect, but it's more than enough to prop up some bridges. You can see them for yourself, thanks to YouTuber and VR documentary maker "Syrmor".
Logitech’s new Adaptive Gaming Kit rounds out Microsoft’s accessible gamepad
The Xbox Adaptive Controller is a lovely thing. Last year, Microsoft aimed to make gaming more accessible by providing a handy little rectangle with two huge buttons and dozens of slots for plugging in new input options. The idea was, you'd mix and match new input options to create a customised controller playable by anyone, regardless of physical requirements.Finding those inputs, however, could be an…
95% of Assassin's Creed Odyssey players kept subtitles on, Ubisoft have revealed, and 50% of The Division 2 players are currently playing with them on too. These surprising statistics and more come from a wee tweetblast this week confirming that yes, subtitles are hugely desirable even in murdergames. Even as someone who often plays with subs on, I'm surprised by the numbers shared by David…
Riot Games apologise for LoL event’s risk to epileptic players
Riot Games have apologised after part of a new League Of Legends event proved a problem for some players with photosensitive epilepsy, more than most of the game usually is. Riot say they had considered an option to disable the flashy animations which risk triggering seizures in some photosensitive players but they were short on time so, with a choice between launching without the option…
Feature:
How one deaf Overwatch fan is trying to make the game more accessible
If you’re tuning into the Overwatch League’s stage two playoffs this weekend, you might see a video featuring 14-year-old Danik Soudakoff. Soudakoff is an attendee of some of the games in the Burbank arena, a fan of the Los Angeles Valiant, and deaf. When attending games, he gets an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter to keep him informed, and he’s been a part of creating…
Video game communications now fall under US accessibility laws
Video games may get a touch friendlier to chatty players with disabilities, as new(ish) US accessibility laws governing communication features now apply to the medium. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) only covers aspects of games like text and voice chat and their UIs, not requiring any changes to how they play, and only if developers won't need to spend an amount…
Overwatch’s Halloween PvE event is live, and Torbjörn’s rework too
'Tis the season to be spooky (mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha, wa-ha-ha-ha) and don we now our ghoul apparel in Overwatch, as its annual Halloween event has returned with more PvE action and more new spooky costumes. It's not all seasonal, mind, as last night's update also launched the reworked Torbjörn with his new abilities, tweaked a few other heroes including Pharah, remixed the sound, and whacked in new…
The accessibility-focused Xbox Adaptive Controller is out now and usable on PC
I don't need the Xbox Adaptive Controller, but there are a lot of people who do. Designed to make games more accessible for all, it's a customisable hub centred around a chunky pair of buttons and an oversized D-pad, designed to be used on any surface or even mounted. It's bristling with ports to attach assistive switches or sticks to, and can be used in…
If you wish to turn off all the objective markers, glowing item highlights, and even guiding paint splashes in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, you will be able to. Leap and puzzle without any obvious assistance, if you please. Or if you find those handy and want all the help you can get, hey, the game will let you do that too. The game's makers…
Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller is coming to Windows 10 PCs later this year
After a week of rumours and leaked images, Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller is finally official - and it works with Windows 10 PCs, too. Designed to let people with limited mobility play games with their own button, joystick and switch setups, the controller is a fantastic step toward making games more accessible to those who can't use a traditional Xbox controller or mouse and keyboard.
The AbleGamers Foundation, an American charity who help people with disabilities to play games by giving them controllers which suit their needs, have launched a new initiative to help improve accessibility problems in games. Their Player Panels will connect developers and researchers to people with disabilities as accessibility testers. Hopefully this scheme will lead to more games being open to more players - and from…
World of Warcraft's 6.1 patch will add a more robust suite of options for colour blind players to use while in Azeroth. Blizzard have had a colourblind mode in World of Warcraft [official site] for a few years now but the next patch will bring a new set of filter and strength options to better cater for people with colour vision deficiencies.
We all know what the bestest best games of 2014 are, and that there can be no disagreement about them. Sadly, a fair few of those will be difficult to play for people with mobility issues, colour blindness, or other disabilities. Celebrating games open to more people, the charity AbleGamers has declared its Accessible Game of the Year winners and runners-up. The PC is well-represented,…
![[Gordon Freeman: ]](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/14/oct/halflifesubtitles.jpg/RPSS/resize/760x-1/format/jpg/quality/90)
Hold on a second, chums. Look at that screenshot again. That's the opening scene of Half-Life with subtitles. Pretty important atmosphere-setting, isn't it, that train ride narration? It makes Black Mesa seem so much bigger than us. Half-Life used an awful lot of speech to reveal what was going on, from our one-sided conversations with scientists to soldiers yelling at each other. Here I pull…
