Communication is key – Nexus game accessibility

Games are social experience in more than one way. Even if a game is designed to be played in a single or solo player, sharing your hopes, progress and your desire to socialize. This leads to people from all places, age and background to feel the sense of togetherness that supports inclusion. Then we have a multi -donated game, which can be very fun or terrible depending on who you play. We have all lived or read about these good and bad stories where some random people make you uncomfortable, harassed and you can only hope they are prohibited or stop. But on the other hand, we have a story about people who create long-lasting friendship and even romantic relationships thanks to this same game. Feelings of joining together to advance through obstacles, defeating challenges and finally sentiment achieving something great with others is encouraging. Humans are social species, that is our nature. But why is this all possible? Because of communication. And this is another topic where accessibility has a very important role. If like many games, communication is the key to success, accessibility is the key to communicating.

In the past, games only offer text chat. Window to type and read, that’s all. Time passed and we moved to the voice chat, which is a blessing and curse. Who hasn’t played the game and needs to ensnare a screen, or a 10-year-old child plays FPS who can only rule everyone around or shout dirty words? But those aspects are not a real problem. The problem is that this communication method is not enough for people with disabilities, being a barrier not only to play well but also to socialize. When this happens, these games turn into elements that create exceptions and frustration, isolate us from others even more.

I will share some examples of my life and play with others.

As a low mobility gamer with SMA Type-3, muscle dystrophy that affects my strength and mobility, I cannot type on the physical keyboard. I can press a certain button on the left side, such as W, E, C, X, space …, the arrow and numpad buttons. I can also use the mouse, which allows me to type using the Windows On-Screen keyboard. MMO is one of the games where people make many connections. For me it never happened because of their nature is mostly based on text chat. Using a keyboard on the screen is not fast enough for others, it dries and if the game locks the mouse cursor to the game window can cause more problems than anything. Also, text chat has a tendency to disappear or does not allow typing when the text window loses focus. In the end, a game full of life and people I want to play is a quiet place, with a little offer and many things to miss.

The voice chat functioned well for me and in most of my games using it. But what happens when other people can’t use it? Playing in a team with other defective gamers with various types of disability is the best test. For our review of the several titles that we play with a team consisting of the following people:

• Alexia, a gamer who is difficult to hear, only relies on text chat.
• Victor, who due to low vision, uses sound chat. Can type the chat if needed but cannot read the text.
• Tezzle, a low mobility gamer who cannot use sound chat. He needs to play using the keyboard on the screen not only to communicate but to do most of the inputs needed to play.
• And finally, me.

Games offer various results.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is the most successful in general thanks to having text-to-words and greetings, which gives us the ability to speak and use the text produced to communicate with Alexia, and for him to type and make text converted into audio for Victor. This is not a process that is free of mistakes, because one of the problems of speaking-to-text is that sound recognition is Hit & loses most of the time and we have some problems to make it work well. Tezzle also faces problems, because when he tries to type something, the chat window will lose focus and prevent any text from entering. The ping system works well, and despite our initial chaos successfully launched a frontal attack on a large enemy base and cleaned it. Still, communicating is not very good and we have fun but we feel it can be better, for Alexia and most tezzles.

Shortly after, we played again. This time Alexia, Victor and I tested bleeding. His experience is similar but we have a number of problems with voice chat and greetings, which results in lack of communication except for Alexia who can type freely. Text-to-Speech works well help Victor. The ping system is once again a savior because it is also easy to use thanks to having a good choice for use with toggles and visual cues and sounds but not for all of us. These problems seem better now but that is something that affects our experiences on a large -magnitude.

The consensus is that the text-to-speech and greetings are a good tool to overcome the obstacles we face, as long as they work well. With the latest improvement in their way of working in games people can finally see ways to stop isolated from their teammates, able to fully enjoy the social aspects of the game. In this case, CVAA is the main instrument, because this law enforces the creation and application of features to ensure the game provides a way of communicating and thus the inclusion of all gamers, no matter their disability.

When this obstacle was not there, his experience was far more positive. This is an example:

One night, Victor and I played. We just finished repairing our wounds from the meeting with enemy patrols. We brought them out quickly in short but intense shootouts. Team work is very important and works thanks to coordination through voice chat and ping system. Now we continue our journey to find the enemy of the wolf enemies. This is very skilled, well trained … Challenges are far more difficult. We stopped for a moment to check our position and Victor said, “Wow, this is beautiful. This game has some extraordinary moments”. The sound of the sea waves on the beach, the forest was heard at sunset while we walked towards the sun … Yes, it was really beautiful. Victor could barely see but all of these elements were combined creating a special moment of calm beauty for him and I was lucky to share it. I took a screenshot from the view and we continued our mission. This type of experience makes a special game, which makes us bound as friends. If we cannot communicate without obstacles, most of these moments will be passed.

It is important that the industry remains in this course, and includes people from all aspects of life and all kinds of disabilities in their research about this and new tools to maintain the key elements from becoming a barrier. Seeing many titles that come with important multiple design components such as Valorant, Outriders, Marvel’s Avengers, Halo Infinite or even Baldur’s Gate 3, I hope they enter this option. The classic games that are very successful such as counter-strikes, Rainbow Six: Siege, Overwatch and many more there are always hope they can be updated with these functions at several points.

If this new confinement has taught us something is the importance of socializing through online means and how valuable the game is valuable to our health. Not applying the lesson means that the game industry is not aware of the extraordinary potential to unite people and the benefits that change life that can come from it when free from obstacles.