Accessibility consultant Ross Minor says he'd love to work with Nintendo
“People think that disabled people don't want to play games"
Accessibility options in video games are getting better all the time, but for many gamers visual or other impairments, it still isn’t enough. Sometimes, games are playable by the visually impaired simply by accident. That was the case with certain Pokémon games played by gaming accessibility consultant Ross Minor.
In a new post on Stephen Totilo’s Game File newsletter, Minor discusses his history with gaming after being blinded in 2006. He says he was able to play through certain titles such as Pokémon Diamond and Pearl without sight thanks to helpful sound cues. For instance, a sound effect played upon bumping into a wall made it easy for him to form a mental map of the game layout in his mind.
Unfortunately, more recent Pokémon titles on Switch are much more difficult for people like Minor to play because of their 3D open world designs. After speaking with Minor for this article, Stephen Totilo reached out to Nintendo to enquire about their commitment to accessibility options going forward. They wrote back with the following reply:
“Nintendo endeavors to provide products and services that can be enjoyed by everyone. Our products offer a range of accessibility features, such as button-mapping, motion controls, a zoom feature, grayscale and inverted colors, haptic and audio feedback, and other innovative gameplay options.
“In addition, Nintendo’s software and hardware developers continue to evaluate different technologies to expand this accessibility in current and future products.”
This statement echoes the one made to shareholders at the beginning of July, but it’s unfortunately not enough for many differently abled gamers. Ross Minor has made a career out of consulting with gaming and media companies in order to ensure their products are more accessible to wider groups of people. Could he someday help make Pokémon and other Switch games more options along those lines? As he says in the article, “Nintendo, if you’re reading this, I’d love to work with you.”
Click here to read the complete post, which contains more insight into the struggles of blind and otherwise impaired gamers, and what’s currently being done to improve the situation.
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