AbleGamers Interview: The Roadblocks Accessibility Still Needs To Overcome

thegamer.com:

Report by Francisco Lahoz

In December 2021, the Game Awards added an Innovations in Accessibility award, which was won by Forza Horizon 5 for features including a built-in screen reader for button prompts and menu options. Forza has been following a trend of games that have made accessibility a major topic of discussion, and has received extensive praise for its implementation of those features, but this praise is not universal.

“I think out of the blind people I know who play Forza, I'm pretty much the only one who bitches about it,” Shay, a 23-year-old accessibility consultant who was born blind, tells me.

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For Shay, who mainly relies on haptic feedback from her controller and audio cues to navigate the games she plays, playing Forza was fun. The game has a feature that limits the top speed of your vehicle in offline play, which allows users to respond to things like turns, easier. The game also has an auto-steering feature to make those turns easier to take, letting players enjoy the sensation without worrying about perfect timing.

These features were designed with players like Shay in mind. But once developer Playground Games discovered sighted people were abusing the feature to farm for in-game currency, they quickly patched it.

“When the game first came out, I was able to freely hit my button for the car to do its thing and it wouldn't time me out,” Shay says, telling me she relied on the auto steering to keep her car on the road. “Sighted people used to farm a lot and now I have to press the stick every few seconds. If I don't, I'm kicked out of the race or convoy.”

She adds, “I mean I don’t hate that they did it. I understand