"My Zelda Cane": Strategies Used by Blind Players to Play Visual-Centric Digital Games

Surveyor: Facilitating Discovery Within Video Games for Blind and Low Vision Players

“…Many mainstream games are inaccessible to BLV players [40], yet a significant number of BLV players express a strong desire to engage with these games. Work by Gonçalves et al, for example, revealed how BLV gamers adapt by using existing features within these games, such as sound design, to overcome their general inaccessibility [21]. Despite their efforts, BLV players still face challenges due to missing information and the increased cognitive effort needed to play these games without the necessary assistive tools, resulting in a less enjoyable experience.…”

“…Gaming for BLV audiences has largely centered around "audio games" -games that present audio-based experiences and which often feature little to no visuals [16,35]. Many well-known audio game titles -such as Terraformers [25, 58], A Hero's Call [39], and ShadowRine [30] -represent environments as lists and twodimensional grids [21]. However, this approach simplifies worlds that may have otherwise been rich and highly detailed were they designed for sighted players -thus resulting in inequivalent gaming experiences [1].…”

“…Some audio games attempt to work around this by integrating audio cues into the environment to enhance players' environmental awareness [35]. Despite this, games created for BLV audiences are still not comparable to mainstream games targeted toward sighted players in terms of complexity and fun [1,21,35].…”

“…27,39,58] use menu-based representations to present the world to players. Thus, given that menu-based approaches have been widely used in audio games [21], we wanted to directly compare Surveyor with these approaches and capture BLV players' sentiments when they use both tools within the same study session.…”

“…Participants' desire for an "easier" experience points to allowing this ease-of-use as an important component of facilitating fun when exploring. In fact, Gonçalves et al found that some BLV players prefer to enjoy games in a more passive manner, perhaps to enjoy a game's sound design [21].…”