This is a rather unique experience of mine — I was participating in a closed beta of a video game called Rainbow Six Extraction a few months ago, a title created by the game company Ubisoft. There are some interesting points that stood out to me throughout my first gameplay. The first one being when I just started the game to enter the setup menu, I have immediately noticed that everything in the menu was narrated with a voice generator, it is really rare that this is an option turned on as the default setting in a video game. And as I completed the setup and entered the game, the game’s UI opened up a sub-layer that indicated every directional sound with an icon on each informing me what those sounds were.
These are definitely very special care given by the developers, and behaviors like this game’s reminded me that it is easy for players that don’t have any difficulties seeing and hearing to turn of accessibility settings to satisfy their own needs, but it can be difficult for audibly and visually impaired players to even find these options and turn them on in the first place. Quality and care like the ones mentioned above did not make that game a better game, but I think it is something that the industry should really take note and incorporate even simple features like those when their next titles launch.
From a corporate perspective, its easy to overlook opportunities of incorporating accessibility designs due to the potential difficulties and low return on investment, but remembering why inclusivity is necessary is always important being a designer, as our role is to connect technologies with as many people as possible, thus accessibility and inclusivity should really become a duty for us when we conceptualize new designs in the future.
