You said that 3d audio sounds expensive. There’s already a 3d audio plugin for the engine, so you’re mistaken.
However the game being blind accessible is almost completely dependent on the UI being accessible. 3D audio has nothing to do with that.
Does that make more sense now?
Braille is not part of the discussion. There are many games with blind accessible interfaces, either through internally synthesized text to speech, or compatibility external third party software.
This seems to be your issue.
Nobody here can rewrite the UI for you.
Issue is pretty much everything requires a mouse to interact with things, even attempting to navigate the UI through just keyboard controls would be a complete PITA, how are you going to doubleclick in space to move in a specific direction without a mouse? given the dynamic nature of objects in 3D space you’re going to struggle to translate that to a screen reader especially when lots of things have hitboxes that aren’t even visible to sighted players
EVE did once experiment with WASD controls for flying around but i don’t think i know anyone who actually uses it in any serious capacity outside of using it for taking beauty shots for videos, sadly EVE is not and likely never will be blind friendly just due to the density of information and the delay a screen reader is going to have updating it, for example how are you going to manage to translate probe scanning to a screen reader when the elements are entirely visual? trying to use the directional scanner? etc
There are a lot of things that are complex for someone who is fully sighted and knows what they are doing, someone who has never “seen” the EVE UI is going to get lost extremely quickly trying to navigate it without actually being able to see it
I mean i applaud trying to make games more accessible, but not every game is going to work for that
There’s also an issue in that any system that would unclutter things and help visually impaired people would do the same task even better for non-impaired people. I wouldn’t even have to focus on my screen all the time if an audio message popped up saying ‘ Suspect XYZ has just arrived 38km from Jita’. I’d be using any such system all the time.
First not everyone types like that.
It had triggered me to try to resist from giving you a little wordsalad that would break the friendship we sort of hold.
Wordsalad @Uriel_the_Flame can be anything even when the reply is greater than a single sentence.
The amount of wordsalad Princess sprees out is far more than what ever Frosty had written .
Do you want to dig deeper into this? Just remember that this isn’t only one Character or Capsuleer who used drawn out dialogue to express their point on a forum such as Eve Online.
Sad though very true.
This conversation can serve no more purpose goodbye!
In favor of all of this. Just keep in mind you’re talking to a dev team that can’t even get something as simple as mining right.
It’s also not compatible with 99% of people who aren’t blind… that’s why it’s a niche game within niche games.
Friends, hello everyone!
First of all, I want to thank everyone who took part in the discussion about the accessibility of EVE Online. No matter what your point of view is, it truly matters, because every opinion helps us understand how to make the game more accessible and comfortable for everyone.
As for 3D sound, I’d like to point out that it’s not an essential feature. In EVE Online, most actions and events already have their own unique sounds that players can use as cues. Audio beacons for determining the exact position of objects in space don’t play a critical role. What’s far more important is ensuring access to the interface and controls.
I’d also like to touch on how information is perceived. In real life, we, blind people, don’t receive the full amount of visual information either. Yet we live, learn, work, and successfully adapt to the world by using other ways of interacting with it. So, accessibility in a game can be achieved without having to voice absolutely everything.
To make the idea clearer, let me give an example using the “Overview” panel.
Imagine that by pressing a key combination (for example, Ctrl + ]) an accessibility mode is activated. It doesn’t cause any visual changes, but it allows interaction with the game through text-to-speech. In this mode, you can move up and down through available sections such as “Skills,” “Market,” “Ship Fitting,” “Hangar,” and, when in space, “Overview” and others.
Let’s say we’re in open space, in a system with asteroid belts. Using the arrow keys, we navigate to “Overview,” press the right arrow, and enter it. Inside, there are several preconfigured tabs for different activities: “Mining,” “Structures,” and so on. We choose “Mining,” press the right arrow again to open it, and get a list of asteroid belts. After selecting the desired belt, we press the right arrow once more to open the context menu (the equivalent of a right-click for sighted players). We choose the needed action, press Enter — and it’s executed.
The same logic could be used for navigation in other sections as well — the “Skills” window, “Ship Fitting,” and so forth. Almost everything in EVE Online is already based on an object structure. Making it accessible through a tree-style system of spoken menus is entirely feasible. The same data used by sighted players would be used here too, which means the information and interaction speed would, in many cases, be nearly identical.
Thank you to everyone paying attention to this topic. I hope my example clearly shows that accessibility isn’t a separate interface, but an alternative way of interacting with the same game world.
I do foresee a potential issue, though. Let me give an example….
As a suspect hunter at Jita, I have to be constantly visually aware of what’s in space. Not only from the perspective of what to shoot, but also I could equally be shot myself during an engagement timer. These are all things where I have to maintain constant awareness.
If an AI voice blurted out ‘ There’s a suspect Stratios 46km away’ that would certainly help visually impaired people…but it would help me even more. I wouldn’t have to pay 100% attention all the time, as the system would now be doing that for me.
Same goes for the risk during engagement timer. If an AI voice blurted out ‘ That guy you shot in a Punisher has just undocked in a Vindicator’, that would save me having to pay full attention.
The danger here is that something quite innocently designed to help impaired folks would almost certainly be used to the advantage of non-impaired folks.
Frankly, I can’t understand making any video game blind-accessible at all. Like it or not video games are visual content. There are just some things you can’t do when you’re blind. And I’m not trying to be a dick here, being blind is one of the worst things that can happen to a person and I understand wanting to feel included in activities meant for people who can see. But what use are you gonna have of EVE being translated to textual audio form?
It would be akin to asking for some type of an interface that would enable blind people to drive a bus. I can’t fathom many people wanting to ride such a bus.
Even though technically I can see that it’s possible to do it, you would have to overlay the game with content that spells out everything going on on the screen and consequently it would no longer be intelligible. It’s just like pages and pages of legal texts that need to spell out every tiny detail of a case where the problem is not in the words spelled out but in the nature of the case. And you can’t always spell that out in words.
But EVE is not so simple as undocking, selecting belt, and activating mining lasers. First you gotta buy a ship that can mine. Not just that, you have to get it from where you bought it to where you live/mine. You have to fit it, there are a multitude of ways to fit one and a single ship. It can take a sighted person as long as 2 hours to fit 1 ship in this game sometimes, I can’t imagine how long that would take for blind players.
OK, so you got the ship and it’s in the system you want to mine in. You warp to a belt but it might not have any asteroids left, someone could have mined them all. So you have to go looking for a new belt or a new mining system even. Then there are ganking scouts out and about who will warp to your belt in a mining ship to get close to you for warp in. A sighted person will see the cues to determine whether it could be a threat immediately. You, however, have to listen to the interface for 10 minutes before it’s done with the analysis of that new ‘‘miner’’. In those 10 minutes you’ll be long dead. So off you go to buy a new mining ship 10 jumps away.
Is this really something that sounds fun to you? I’m honestly curious, because I would get bored with such a game in 10 minutes.
My point is – a lot of situations in EVE will require immediate recognition and action on the circumstances you find yourself in. I mean immediate. Delaying your action even 1 second can prove fatal. There is no accessibility solution that will overcome this.