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Blind and Visually Impaired Community

Full History - 2017 - 08 - 17 - ID#6uc8q9
9
EA Game Accessibility Feedback and Announcement (self.Blind)
submitted by ea_accessible
Hi everyone, I'm an accessibility advocate at Electronic Arts. I'm currently doing accessibility on a volunteer basis internally, and am actually an engineer on Madden NFL. I'm taking feedback on any EA product.

There will be a patch coming out shortly after release to make Madden more accessible to the blind. I post all updates on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ea_accessible. For more information, you can also follow http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=22664

If anyone hits any roadblocks in any EA games due to any type of accessibility issue, I'd be really interested to hear about it. I've been pushing teams internally to make changes that allow a larger audience to be able to play our games.

My twitter is http://www.twitter.com/ea_accessible, which I use to collect feedback and announce accessibility features. Please email is AccessibilityFeedback@ea.com to leave feedback. I will forward it to the right teams.

Thank you for helping make games that more are able to play.

Karen Stevens
Terry_Pie 1 points 5y ago
Thanks for your post. Are you aware if Origin (i.e. EA's online DRM/store/community system) has a high contrast mode? If not, could you flag with the developers that it would be Greatly Appreciated if they ensured the platformed maintained 60% contrast at a minimum, or enabled it to be affected by Windows high contrast settings.

I'm mostly concerned about the log in and update screens, which are pretty close to unusable for me.

Cheers :)
ea_accessible [OP] 2 points 5y ago
I'll follow up with the team, thanks.
Amonwilde 1 points 5y ago
Have you considered voice menus activated by a key sequence? Often low vision players can see the action onscreen to a greater or lesser extent but can't read the menus.
ea_accessible [OP] 1 points 5y ago
Can you explain what you mean by activated by a key sequence?
reseatshisglasses 3 points 5y ago
I'm assuming this users response here but I think they mean that if a button isn't used in any of the the menus throughout the game, like clicking the left joystick button, and you change it to something like this

*click and hold left joystick

>if the joystick button is depressed - temporarily disable the normal function of some other keys in anticipation for a code input

*while holding left joystick button, hit a b a b, or an equivalent depending on the system. This is the key sequence, or code.

>this triggers all menus henceforth to be voiced out loud for the player. Another button sequence/code can be used to specifically voice only the current menu, and not all menus. Ex. ' depress and hold left stick button - hit a a b b - release left stick button. Current menu is now read to the player '

Now if you really want to go an extra step and make an impressive impact, you can have the programmers set up a small memory for which menus the players profile wants to be voices. Lets say, a low vision player only needs a few of the specific menus read to them. A third key sequence or code can be used by the player to say ' Remember this menu and always read it'. Now the player doesn't need to hit a code every 2 minutes of game play, and they don't need to listen to voiced menus that they don't need to hear. A fourth key sequence can be used to reset all menus set to voice activate. Print the key sequenced codes on a Braille sheet and insert that into the jewel cases of the game, or mail it to customers if they email a specific address.
Amonwilde 1 points 5y ago
A good response, but I'd probably ask them to make the sequence something more complicated, like holding down the left and right trigger for 8 seconds. When sighted users trigger these commands by accident they get very distressed, which is bad press for us VI folks.
ianhamilton__ 1 points 5y ago
or read whether text to speech is activated at system level, if so turn it on at game level too
[deleted] 1 points 5y ago
[deleted]
ea_accessible [OP] 1 points 5y ago
I have never considered this, but it sounds really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
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