Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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When a game isn't accessible, what are your workarounds to possibly make some accessible? (self.Blind)
submitted by ChipsAhoiMcCoy
I know about OCR and the Lion addon which is realtime OCR, and while this does open up a few genres of games, I'm wondering if it is possible that there are other tools that may help even more? Curious w hat you guys are aware of, eager to see if there is anything I might be missing. Thanks!
r_1235 2 points 1y ago
If you have little sight, perhaps windows color filtors might help. Once enabled, windows ctrl c quickly switches between normal and your prefered color scheme.
Pro tip: Color filtors has a high contrast filtor as well. This is way faster then the high contrast theme or magnifire's options. So, if you are that fello who doesn't always like to use high contrast, but would like to use it at times, this is the best and quickest option. There's no delay between switching between modes, it's instant. So, you can look at game in normal way, but when you can't see something, quickly switch to color filtor and get the task done, and then get back to normal colors quickly as well.
Pro tip: Color filtors has a high contrast filtor as well. This is way faster then the high contrast theme or magnifire's options. So, if you are that fello who doesn't always like to use high contrast, but would like to use it at times, this is the best and quickest option. There's no delay between switching between modes, it's instant. So, you can look at game in normal way, but when you can't see something, quickly switch to color filtor and get the task done, and then get back to normal colors quickly as well.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
This sounds pretty cool perhaps I can take a peek at what types of color filter options there is on windows do you happen to know how to get to the settings? I imagine you just use the search field in the taskbar and type in color filter? Thanks for the suggestion!
Daniel6Skins 2 points 1y ago
How well does the lion add-on work? I haven't used it and was wondering if it would work for either subtitled shows or visual novels/text heavy games. In terms of other tools I can't speak to any persona experience besides the accesability options in some games but I've heard of people modding games like world of warcraft to make it more accessible. Also people use a game capture card like Legato to run the display from a console to their computer to OCR. I imagine it would work to zoom in and out as well.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 0 points 1y ago
Lion is exceptional. I hope the developer sticks with development. I am able to watch anime subtitled instead of dubbed because it is able to read subtitles in realtime once properly configured. You might have to fiddle with it for a little while to get it working super well, and it is buggy on occasion, but most of the time it works very well. You can definitely use it for visual novels, too. It would excel at that, I think.
Daniel6Skins 1 points 1y ago
oh is this an NVDA only thing? I'm on Mac.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Yeah this is only available for NVDA I think perhaps there is an alternative for voiceover on Mac? I’m not super sure but I hope you can find something!
Daniel6Skins 1 points 1y ago
I know the tech is there because Apple has this feature called Live text which converts images from Safari or preview into readable next but it only works for those two apps.
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
Wait now what? This is something I've never heard of. I've always just used capslock R for every text box. Lately I've been using Envision AI on my phone to read shorter text boxes, but as you can imagine, holding a phone up to a screep for moments on end is awkward. Though it does usually work exceptionally well. But now this Lion addon, that sounds interesting. I may need to look that up, though if what the last user said about its abandonment is true, it might be that I am too late.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I think it may have been abandoned but thankfully it still works at the latest version of NVDA this tool is so crucial to my gaming experience at this point though that even if there was an update for NVD I probably would roll back if it bricked my lion copy or even keep two separate NVDA installations somehow because this tool is absolutely essential to my gaming experience at this point this tool and advanced OCR are both extremely exceptional it would be really awesome if a lot of the community members rally together to create a fork of the lion add-on that was maybe even better and kept up-to-date I have many cool ideas for the lien add-on but no coding knowledge to make those ideas a reality
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
Honestly, if it ever got to a point where I couldn’t use lion I would probably just downgrade my NVDA version and not upgrade until there’s an alternative I can’t really live without it at this point it’s almost crucial to play certain genres of games specifically visual novels and if you’re a gamer who uses NVDA I feel like this is just a necessity it would be so cool if the community rallied around to learn some python so that we could create an even better enhanced lien that was updated frequently there are many ideas I have that could improve the lien add on to make it even better one example could be some sort of queuing system where it would sort of start reading off text from a snapshot but if fresh text entered the frame it would add it to the queue and the queue could not exceed three or something along those lines because it does have the tendency to get overloaded if it recognizes loads of text on the screen but yeah I think maybe the author has a band end of the project but thankfully it does still work with the most updated version of NVDA and I definitely will not be upgrading if it means I lose access to this add-on
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
Yeah, I just downloaded it after reading this thread. It's fantastic! I was just thinking how something like this would be helpful the other day. I have enough vision to navigate games — mostly, but reading long blocks of text is a slow and arduous process. Manual NVDA recognition and Envision AI's quick text scanning have really helped out, but they require constant supervision. This though, it's a great leap forward. I'm playing the Mass Effect Legendary edition right now which has a ton of glossary entries. Pain to read, but so interesting. I've literally just set the left cropping to 50%, because all the important text is on the right. Work's perfectly, except when I scroll the text. But even that I've found a workaround for by just scrolling as it's reading. It's like having quick text right on my screen. Actual game changer, and I'm now with you about updating NVDA. We should reach out to the developer just to let them know how helpful it's been. I have no doubt it would help a great deal for rpgs with text boxes, and yes, also visual novels'. Both are very interesting to me, but so far I've avoided those which were not at least MOSTLY voiced.
As an aside, did you know that visual novels made with a certain engine are actually self-voicing even if they don't have voice acting? I'm actually doing music, sound and hopefully voice acting for one which uses this engine and the engine is very accessible! A complete surprise!
As an aside, did you know that visual novels made with a certain engine are actually self-voicing even if they don't have voice acting? I'm actually doing music, sound and hopefully voice acting for one which uses this engine and the engine is very accessible! A complete surprise!
SightlessKombat 1 points 1y ago
Unfortunately it is seemingly abandoned as of now, or at least I haven't found a version yet that works with recent NVDA updates. Happy to be prove wrong.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I’m not sure which version I’m currently running, but I’m on the latest NVDA and I’ve been using the lion add-on for a few weeks now ever since you initially told me about it and it’s been working flawlessly I wish I had a link if I did I would drop it here as to where I got it from, but so far it’s been pretty good
SightlessKombat 1 points 1y ago
Fair enough. I'll see if I can find a new version then. Never did get subs to work with it, but admittedly you do need a little sighted advice to get it consistently working, likely as not.
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
I have just enough sight to read, but a game must have two things for me to be interested in playing it — either full — or at least majority of it being voice acted, and some sort of map system to keep track of where I am. These days NVDA has helped with the former, though I still vastly prefer voice acting for immersiongh NVDA's near instant text recognition has been an actual game-changer for me though. I wish JAWS had a less awkward OCR feature.
Terry_Pie 1 points 1y ago
I've not looked into how to get the most out of NVDA to make games accessible. Do I need anything more than a regular NVDA installation to do on screen OCR? What do I need to do to use it?
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
You'll want to ensure any game you play is inWindowed mode and that it fills up the whole screen. Most games should do that by default, and some don't necessarily require it. Press NVDA key to OCR the screen, then use the arrow keys like you normally would to read the content. Not sure there's any way to navigate. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong. Also recommend the Lion addon, because it will allow you to set which part of the screen you want it to focus on, and it will OCR for you in real-time, which is amazing. You do need to set it right. Don't want it to focus on either too much or too little.
Terry_Pie 1 points 1y ago
Ok, I'll see about giving it a go some time. I note above some said they've had issues using Lion with the latest version of NVDA. Have you had the same issue? If not, where did you download it from to ensure I get a version that works.
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
As far as I'm aware I have the most recent NVDA, and I haven't had any trouble using it. Doesn't work every time, but the times it doesn't seem rare. I literally just googled Lion NVDA addon and found it.
ChipsAhoiMcCoy [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I would like to expand on this by saying you actually can use OCR and fullscreen games or at least in my experience you can perhaps it doesn’t work with certain games? But the first step to OCR your screen is to hold down the NVDA key and hit the arche this will begin recognizing your currently focused object in this case that being the video game you’re playing once this happens you can use the arrow keys up and down to navigate between the extracted text once you find a text do you want to navigate to to select it you’ll want to hit the NVDA key and the left shift key and M at the same time to jump your mouse cursor there and then you’ll want to hit the NVDA key as well as I think it’s the [key to perform a left click using this, you can actually navigate most menus and games fairly easily
Remy_C 1 points 1y ago
Really? I didn't know about the mouse routing. I notice the only real problem I have with full screen is sometimes NVDA doesn't recognize where you are and will just say no content visible. Or it might recognize but not much, even though if you try it again it will after. I find pressing the NVDA key plus Numpad 2 usually helps, though it's cumbersome to keep doing it.
SightlessKombat 1 points 1y ago
As a gamer without sight, utilisation of Parsec (requiring sighted assistance to set up) and a Titan 2 (an adaptor that allows for simultaneous control through the hardware and Parsec) is my go-to method, though it took a while to get to this point.
SightlessBastard 1 points 1y ago
There is really no general answer to that. It would highly depend on the actual game, you want to play.
TechnicalPragmatist -1 points 1y ago
I think some people use sounds. I know of a few people on here who seem to have very little vision or no vision at all play a few video games.
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