Accessibility is essential to allow everyone to enjoy experiences that they may have, in the past, missed out on due to a lack of vision, a lack of hearing, or so many other factors.
As many of you will know, both Jae and James are visually impaired, and so making one of our favourite pastimes more accessible for those with a wide range of sight conditions is a truly exciting topic for us.
So, Jae reached out to Brandon Cole, an incredibly talented and respected accessibility consultant with credits within the Forza series, not to mention his incredible work on The Last of Us games, so we could sit down and have a chat about all of the work he does as well as a discussion on why accessibility for the blind and visually impaired poses many challenges we may not have considered before.
Do you have any experience with accessibility features in games, or maybe the lack of them? We’d love to hear from you, so please send us a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, or why not come join the discussion on our Discord server.
If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.
Affiliate Promotion
If you want great pricing with fantastic customer support for all your Linux based cloud computing needs, you can get $100 of free credit with Linode, cloud computing by Akamai, when you sign up here.
Episode Links
- BrandonCole.net – Brandon’s website
- @SuperBlindMan – Brandon on Mastodon
- Last of Us Part II: Is this the most accessible game ever? – BBC News
- Virtually Superior: A Playstation VR 2 review – Brandon’s PS VR2 review
- Retro Collective – The Cave and Arcade Archive
Chapter Times
- 00:00:04: Introductions
- 00:03:36: Why is Gaming Accessibility Important?
- 00:08:37: Blind vs Visual Impairement
- 00:13:25: Game Studio Attitudes
- 00:21:13: Channels of Information
- 00:31:04: Unfair Advantage?
- 00:36:06: Controls
- 00:43:14: What Has Driven Accesibility Forward?
- 00:50:26: A Good Day’s Pay
- 00:53:19: Accesible Retro Gaming?
- 00:58:42: What’s Missing?
- 01:06:30: Wrapping Up
Credits
Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com