EVE Online for Everyone: Let's Make It Accessible!

Communications Center General Discussion
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Hello, Capsuleers of New Eden! My name is Serhii. I am a completely blind person, but I love video games. And this love makes me fight to ensure everyone can enjoy their favorite titles.

EVE Online is not just a game; it’s a unique universe with its economy, epic battles, and limitless possibilities for exploration. But for us, blind players, the current interface is an insurmountable barrier. We simply cannot immerse ourselves in EVE.

I have already raised this topic on the EVE Online forum in 2019 and 2023 Accessibility for people with disabilities and EVE Online Accessibility Support
I received support from the community, but my concerns were never acknowledged by the CCP Games team.

In 2025, my interest in the issue remains strong. I — along with an entire community of blind and visually impaired gamers — still want accessibility in EVE Online!

Moreover, since then, I’ve played and tested many games designed for blind players, and now, from personal experience, I understand how accessibility works and how it can be effectively implemented.

EVE Online, with its vast amount of textual information and logical, object-oriented structure, has enormous potential for adaptation. If CCP Games takes these steps, it will not only attract a new audience but also show the world that EVE is a game that evolves and cares about its players.

Here are some key points for accessibility integration:

Voice acting for all text: So that a speech synthesizer (or popular screen readers like NVDA/JAWS) vocalizes all interface elements, mails, item descriptions, news, everything that is text.

Real-time important information vocalization: Notifications about damage, target data, chat messages, module status, shields, armor, warp drive status.

Voice customization: To be able to adjust the speed and volume of the speech synthesizer.

Enabling/disabling individual voice alerts: The ability to manage voice alerts for important events such as enemy appearance, mining completion, target lock, module activation, and docking.

Spatial sound for navigation: 3D sound that will indicate where other ships, stations, and asteroids are located.

Why is this cool?

New pilots: We will attract an entire community of blind and visually impaired gamers.

Excellent image: CCP Games will show that they care about accessibility.

Innovation: CCP Games will stand alongside industry leaders such as Activision Blizzard, Naughty Dog, Ubisoft, and Sony, who are already actively implementing accessibility.

Benefit for all: Many features developed for the blind, such as voice alerts, will also be useful for sighted players.

I believe that the potential benefit and gratitude of the blind gaming community will be immense.

For the past few years, I have been working on video game accessibility and adaptation as part of the InviOcean project team. We have both personal blind gaming experience and a clear understanding of how many of these functions can be implemented relatively simply and effectively, minimizing the burden on developers. We are ready to be a liaison with the blind gaming community: provide feedback, participate in testing, and share experience.

This time, I’m not limiting myself to a forum post — I’ve written a dedicated letter to CCP Games asking them to address accessibility in EVE Online. But to truly raise awareness, I need the support of the community.

If this issue matters to you, let’s show CCP how important it is! Like, share, and talk about this post on forums and social media. The more support we get from fellow pilots, the greater the chance CCP will take notice, and EVE Online can become accessible to everyone!

Thank you for your attention and support!

Sincerely,

Serhii

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Hello swing alt numer 36

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I am in support of this…but the problem is that the gaming companies wouldn’t see it as being cost effective to implement… I would suggest training one of the AI programs for voice commands… I don’t know where the line is drawn on using AI to play, but you could approach them and ask what would be permissable… The problem in this game is that unimpaired players would certainty abuse it… They might make special concessions upon proving that you are impaired… I hope they find a way to help you… :slightly_smiling_face:

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I see what you did here

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Lol… I honestly wasn’t trying to do that… :slightly_smiling_face:

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This sounds expensive.

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WIsh you luck with it.. I am a big advocate for getting those that are disabled to be able to have as much access to the internet as any body that is sighted, ect.

Though just as a point of note. I have my sound set for directional. I can generally tell where my attack probes are fighting when I am sitting in my retriever.

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Just curious: Doesn’t the game allow screen reading? It’s basically simple windows and nothing I would see as overly complicated except there are some anti-bot measures that interfere with this

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A very good friend of mine lost his arm and had to give up this game (which is LOVED) because of it. I hope that it does one-day become more accessible.

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Gosh, the complexity of this…just for undocking from Jita…would be horrendous…

‘You have undocked’
‘There are 57 other ships within 100km…5 Praxis, 14 Catalysts, a Vargur, 4 Tornados, yada, yada, yada…’
‘You have bumped into the station while attempting to go that way…and are stuck’
‘Gloria Exercitus has locked your ship and is scanning it’
‘Those Catalysts just went flashy red’

…and all of that within 5 seconds of undocking.

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More like a tornado pops the ship within one millisecond after undock invul drops. :thinking:

:wink:

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They can borrow my 440K EHP Eagle…though that does raise an issue. How does one activate assault damage control if not only can one not see the screen but one equally doesn’t know that one is being damaged. Or is there supposed to also be a voice saying ‘95% shield remaining…’ and updating every few seconds ?

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Well not sure how it could be pulled off in a way it grants at least a somewhat even playing field. I could imagine mining, PvE and such activities are more forgiving but actual PvP (unless as part of a group) seems too fast paced to be feasible.

Btw here is an old related thread, not sure if that player is still around but might be useful to check the thread and maybe contact that player as well:

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I have set up a few Linux OS boxes for blind users. Not one of them ever seemed interest in video games. Most used a screen reader called Jaws which soaked them for $1500 or a monthly subscription. I set them up with Orca or Speakup which costs them nothing. These work well for web browsers and reading email.

If on the off chance, I had someone ask me about video games, such as Eve for the blind, I would do the following;

Get the UI set up properly

  • CTRL+Shift+F9 - Disables the 3D window. Now you are left with only 2D windows.
  • Hide all brackets by default. This eliminates the icons on the 3D window as well.

Programs Installed

  • I would install Tesseract OCR to covert the screen to text.
  • Install Scrot to read the whole screen or just parts of it.
  • The rest would be a matter of setting key commands for the screen reader.

So as you can tell, this would only require using Linux OS, a sighted person to install and set up the programs on the machine, to grant the blind user audio data. 3D visuals don’t help me on this game, I serious believe you would be disappointed by 3D audio queues. Assuming you can get sighted person to assist you with some basic PC knowledge, maybe they can find you an OCR and capture program.

Here is an HBO news video about a blind man playing Mortal Kombat.

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Thank you to everyone who has commented on and discussed this topic.
There’s a kernel of truth in every response: not all game mechanics can be seamlessly adapted for an audio-only game; some aspects might prove inconvenient, and so forth. However, by approaching the implementation of this initiative with the experiences of visually impaired players in mind, we can effectively mitigate these complexities. For instance, 3D sound isn’t strictly necessary. In my opinion, the existing stereo sound is entirely sufficient, and 3D sound was more pertinent to audio beacons.
Regarding the sheer volume of information displayed when undocking in a trade hub, I believe even sighted players don’t track every single message; the primary goal is to warp out quickly and correctly. This is precisely why I suggested a setting to enable or disable specific groups or individual messages. While OCR is a useful tool, it’s not always convenient and is inherently slower, as it scans the entire screen, forcing users to sift through a wall of text for specific data.
I’m merely speculating about how the client functions, as I don’t have direct knowledge. For me, it would already be a small victory if CCP were willing to even discuss this topic and consider its implementation.

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The user interface is horrible mess of overlapping and semi transparent windows by default. It needs a lot of work to reduce that clutter. I run with about 4 windows open, the 3D is very optional as John has stated above. I think he called it a screensaver once. Many new users expect to fly by W A S D keys, instead we mostly use the mouse to right click a line of text and approach any object. Even knowing where the ship or asteroid is located in 3D space by sound, isn’t going to help. The ship simply travels to the target, orbits, or keeps a set distance. The game designers make the audio a mess with clicks, beeps, and alarms, most of these sounds are also meaningless to me. Well there is the sound of an alarm just prior to your ship exploding, I remember that one all too well.

Eve Online has been called by others spreadsheets in space. I don’t worry too much about the math as other players do. Major battles require a lot of knowing what weapons and defenses to place on the ships. Weapons tend operate like a game of rock, paper, scissors. If your ships are equipped to deal will explosive rounds, and the enemy brought kinetic missiles, I think you may have lost the battle before you left dock.

Being diabetic, I have often thought of what aspects of my life would change, should I go blind. I enjoy reading and writing, books should not be an issue. I watch a lot of movies on Tubi, Netflix, and Disney+. However I mostly listen to them, once you have seen the characters you can figure out who is who. At my age, I doubt my life would change very much, I would miss active video gaming and probably go back to those old Infocomm games like Zork, Suspended, Planet Fall, and such.

Have fun!

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I think the solution to this is already in the works at Elonville with Neuralink. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to just bypass physical senses altogether by sending signals directly to the brain. It’s one of the main selling points for the technology and doesn’t require game developers to make a whole new game for .01% of their potential player base. Placing that kind of burden on the developers would financially break all of them so nobody gets to play video games. I guess that’s one way of leveling the playing field :slight_smile:

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you can play with one arm, it will be very slowly

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Back in the mid 80’s, Science Digest had an article about the navy working on controlling aircraft with the brain instead of hands on a yolk. While running simulations, they found the navy pilots response times greatly improved. The reason given why the program was scrapped, the training took longer, and the cost to fit each jet with a custom neural link was more than the plane itself.

This was all done without surgery, just sensors taped to the pilot’s head. They started by practicing moving a dot up and down on an oscilloscope. The pilots said it was akin to learning to use a 3rd arm. The project never went beyond simulation, as far as I know.

Elon’s Neuralink is still very experimental but works much the same as the above but requires surgical implantation. It won’t be making the blind see anytime soon.

My nephew is deaf, it might sound strange, many people in the deaf community are proud to be deaf. They can get the cochlear implant to learn to hear, yet some reject it. Many people don’t realize that the brain surgery is only a small piece of the puzzle, people don’t understand speech perfectly as soon as the device is activated. They must spend months or even years working with speech therapists, learning how to process this unfamiliar sensory input. They’re trained to lipread, to pick up on vocal cues, and to speak.

I was astonished to find out, the deaf community absolutely hates Alexander Graham Bell. Why? Because he didn’t support the idea of deaf couples getting married. He desired to breed out deafness from humans. Members of the deaf community have criticized Bell for supporting what some consider eugenicist ideas.

I know I would want to see again, if I went blind. However I would be very cautious about experimental brain surgery. Being Elon’s test subject would remind me of all the rockets that didn’t make it off the launchpad.

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How does a “completely blind” person even play EVE?