Let me most likely start an argument in this thread. While I am a blind individual with low vision and minimal mobility impairment on an android device. Let us examine the limitations of the application that is still in what could be considered a Open Beta situation. Not all core features have been activated.

Let us follow this up by examining the spirit of the game. The idea behind the game is to go outside and walk and explore your environment. This activity could be best done for us with a disability by asking our sighted and non-mobility disabled friends to help us and make a trip out of it. One of the cores of the Pokemon franchise as a whole is to go out and meet others and talk to them and make friends.

Calling out the game out for its technical limitations is slightly outdated. Yes we are moving into a more open gaming culture and it has been pointed out by many of my industry friends that the visual impaired community is being left out in gaming. However let us also be realistic.

Pokemon in the past for those with total blindness might have been accessible in theory if you learned the game world and learned all the sound FX. However Pokemon GO is in an order of magnitude larger then the Gameboy version of the game.

You are talking a concept of inplementing Siri or Galaxy integration with turn by turn navigation that could let you know were you are in the world. The next stage of making it accesible would be using the pulsing radius that a player can interact with the augmented reality world act like a sonar pulse for the blind.

If you set the game to silence it vibrates when you get near to a PokeStop or a Pokeman shows up in your zone. If you use a sonar pulsing system to guide you in direction that might help you get close to it. When it comes to throwing the pokeball it could use a vibration system to let you know how on target you are and then throw it or use the Pokemon GO Plus bluetooth device.

From what I have said here you can see that the game has its technical limitations when you start to evaluate the performance hit that your device would have in order to make it a bit more accessible at this stage of development. Battery optimization should be the games priority before adding compatibility.

One other point that has come into my head as I finish writing this post. Gym battles while I have not participated myself and just reached the level to start trying out for them. I feel that the sound FX make it good enough to fight even with limited vision. Just learn the gestures to attack and dodge as well as special attacks.

Hope this gives you some insight into how game developers are not shafting the blind community but have other priorities for a non-niche market.