Accessability For Players with Disabilities and Injuries

[Kalius]

I thought that we would benefit from a place for players with disabilities and injuries to discuss accessibility tools and exchange tips for playing on Homecoming. Use this area to post questions, share solutions, or just showcase your adaptive gaming setup. I'm very interested in seeing what others have setup.

 

I myself have a neck injury that causes issues with my dominant, right, arm and hand including dexterity, lack of sensation, and pain; and am recovering from recent cervical spinal fusion surgery to help prevent further degradation. Currently I am using the following to help me play:

• Remapping controls to the left hand side of the keyboard
• Rollermouse from contourdesign.com and/or Magic Trackpad from apple.com
• Adjustable split keyboard from goldtouch.com
• TimeOut software from dejal.com (to remind me to break to stretch as ordered by my physical therapist)

 

I've been trying to get voice-control/dictation to work in either MacOS or Windows, but so far haven't had any luck. Though I am holding out hope that the new Voice Control features in the next version of MacOS will be compatible and work smoothly.

 

Anyway, let the discussion begin...

[Zodai]

I would generally agree that this is high-priority, but the industry wave to have these things included didn't really get momentum until after CoH already closed down, to my understanding.  To me I'm concerned about like, if the game's infrastructure is built in a way to support these, since that seems like it would be the biggest barrier to this. 

 

Alongside that is the resources of the Homecoming team and whether there are things they would consider higher priority right now - I agree something like this is high priority, but since this is a fan revival in and of itself we don't know how much the team has to go around with whatever else needs doing on their end.  I'm not surprised if they're really swamped already.

 

Definitely support this strongly though - I feel like CoH is a game that appeals to all sorts of people, especially with how creative its hero creation can be, and giving that experience to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to do so, especially when allowing people to play it at all is one of Homecoming's major goals itself. (I hope I'm not putting words into their mouth, just what I remember reading.) 

 

Also!  Here's Game Maker's Toolkit's videos on the topic as well, if anyone wants to look further : > 

 

 

 

Edited September 6, 2019 by Zodai

[Extor Prime]

Add Autohotkey to your list. Requires scripting for the more clever stuff, but really handy for getting around keybind limitations and more.

[Kalius]

Thanks for bringing up those best practices and principles for design. I know that with a fan revival of old code that resources are limited, so we would likely get better response by making smaller more direct requests for features that promote accessibility. So let's brainstorm about particular features that may be of particular use. Things that come off the top of my head would be:

• Support for voice commands not only for entering text but also for navigating on screen features such as menus. In my view I'd be happier with either support for Windows Speech Recognition in Windows 10, or the upcoming Voice Control for MacOS.
• Solutions for button mashing (having to press buttons very fast such as when caught in an enemy disabling attack) such as expanding the key mapping to allow for what normally would be repeat keypresses to a single key press or holding down a button (some but not all of this is doable via macros, but is not fully supported.
• Allowing keyboard shortcuts for things like opening doors and interacting with objects in missions.

 

Thoughts?

[Kalius]

I've made a post to the suggestions forum that links to the discussion here that the game development team should add accessibility features. If you want to see them, give feedback here, but also hit the heart/like button or make a supportive comment to show the dev team that this matters.

 

[Oubliette_Red]

Hearing impaired.

• Perhaps an 'NPC dialog' for indicating that an objective is nearby, close to the same radius as the audio for the glowie.

 

Color-blindness graphics options:

• Red/Green
• Blue/Yellow

At a minimum, I think it might be helpful for folks if they could apply these changes to their UI, in particular the buttons for powers. This is something I've seen mostly in mobile apps, though not many. But I know that players really appreciated it when it was an option.

 

Edited September 6, 2019 by Oubliette_Red

[Kalius]

14 minutes ago, Extor Prime said:

Add Autohotkey to your list. Requires scripting for the more clever stuff, but really handy for getting around keybind limitations and more.

I would love this feature, other similar games have it. I'd love, for example, to have a power activate via autohotkey when the targeted enemy is in range.

[Oubliette_Red]

@Kalius Since this is your thread, you can ask a Mod to move it to Suggestions section. 🙂

[Kalius]

4 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

@Kalius Since this is your thread, you can ask a Mod to move it to Suggestions section. 🙂

Since there is already a post in suggestions, I will leave it there for people to comment on, and to use this area for more of an interactive discussion among users. At least that's how I see it. Also requested an Accessibility channel on the official Discord as I know a lot of people prefer that for their tech support type stuff.