Now We're Getting Somewhere: Prototyping Accessible Auditory Navigation Tools for Open World Video Games

Introduction

Hello, and thank you for your interest in this study. My name is Luke, I am a neurodivergent PhD student at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK. I am currently building a series of tools that facilitate successful auditory navigation for Blind and Low Vision gamers in open world video games. I am about to start a co-design study for these tools that you could take part in!

My previous study

Last year, I ran discussions with gamers who use accessibility features in their gameplay experiences and we discussed the areas in which barriers were most prevalent. We spoke about existing tools and methods players were using to navigate gameplay barriers and how we can intervene with sonic interaction design to allievate the pressures felt by these gameplay barriers. From analysing our discussions, I generated 4 themes:

1. Curiousity, Discovery and Navigation are difficult to achieve with existing gameplay systems from a sonic perspective as sound is most often used aesthetically not functionally
2. Deep customisation of game audio features is desirable for gamers to develop setups that uniquely work for them, but abstractions/presets are required to provide avenues with lower cognitive load
3. Fostering strong sonic identities and individuality lets gamers learn and recollect game features quickly and reliably through auditory learning
4. Gameplay features should exist multimodally to allow for gamers to blend or exclude modalities based on their personal requirements

From this, I decided to focus on developing tools for a fully customisable, accessible auditory navigation system toolkit! I've placed this toolkit into open world game environments, which are often known for their expansive spaces that are primed for exploration (think Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher 3, RDR2...).

What are we doing for this study?

For this study, I have been building a navigation tool for open world game environments with a focus on accessibility for Blind and Low Vision gamers and players who are hearing motivated. Based on last year's discussions and my own research, I have built a first prototype for some of the systems (woohoo!). To develop this further, I am organising a series of co-design sessions with folks who are Blind or have Low Vision. I'd love for this to be a living, breathing toolkit, and so this does not have to just be user testing. If you fancy it, I'd love to chat further about authoring and designing the tool as a collective. This work does contribute towards my PhD thesis which will be written as my own work, however outside of this (such as in publications and design), I can be flexible! By default, I will anonymise data though, so this is not a requirement.

What will I be doing?

You will be sent a very early prototype of my navigation system to play around with. There will be of tasks to complete. The tool is in an early prototype stage, so a good level of computer literacy is helpful for now. In future versions, the toolkit will be more stable, but we are at humble beginnings, so bugs are to be expected! While you complete the task, data will be collected about different gameplay statistics, such as the journey you take and which tool settings you use, for example. I have built the data collection tools myself and they exist within the game. Additionally, we will have a chat over Discord/Teams while you play, discussing the testing, development and speculating about the navigation tool. We can also chat about other gameplay experiences at your own discretion. This will be recorded, transcribed and anonymised for analysis by me after the session. You will be compensated £15 via:

• A gift card at a vendor of your choice
• A donation to a charity of your choice which will be made by the researcher

What qualities do I need to have as a participant?

In order to take part, you must fit the following criteria:

• Be at least 18 years old
• Be Blind or have Low Vision. Specific disability details are not required but you are welcome to discuss them if you'd like to.
• Have good computer literacy and are happy running my game software that may have bugs at this stage.
• Have experience with playing games. The study focuses on open world environments.
• Have access to headphones to use during the study.
• Have access to a gamepad, such as an Xbox or Playstation controller. Currently the tool only works for gamepad, but I will be extending this out in future stages!
• Be able to share gameplay with me either during the playtest or to record it locally to share with me afterwards.

What should I do if I'd like to know more and might be interested in taking part?

If you are interested then please let me know! My email address is Luke.Child@uwe.ac.uk You can also add me and message me on Discord or BlueSky. My username is "CitesAndSounds", a portmanteau of Citations and Sounds. Spelled out, my username is "C I T E S A N D S O U N D S".