New system lets blind players enjoy popular racing video games

Washington: Scientists have developed a new audiobased system that makes existing racing video games accessible to visually impaired people. The audio- based interface, which a player can listen to using a standard pair of headphones, can be integrated by developers into almost any racing video game, making a popular genre of games equally accessible to people who are blind.” The racing auditory display ( RAD) is the first system to make it possible for people who are blind to play a “real” 3D racing game — with full 3D graphics, realistic vehicle physics, complex racetracks, and a standard PlayStation 4 controller,” said Brian A. Smith, a PhD candidate at Columbia University in the US. “It’s not a dumbeddown version of a racing game tailored specifically to people who are blind,” said Smith. While there are a number of games on the market suitable for the blind, many are loaded with competing sources of information that players must sift through, slowing down the fun of playing the game. Others are versions of popular games so simplified that a blind gamer does nothing more than follow orders. There has been a fundamental tradeoff between preserving a game’s full complexity and its pace when making it blind- accessible. “Our challenge was to give visually impaired players enough information about the game so that they could have the same sense of control and thrill that sighted players have, but not so much information that they would get overwhelmed by audio overload or bogged down in just figuring out how to interpret the sounds,” Smith said. The RAD comprises two novel sonification techniques: a sound slider for understanding a car’s speed and trajectory on a racetrack, and a turn indicator system for alerting players about upcoming turns well in advance of the actual turns.