3 ms·
> but for their never ending support on making sure “gaming” can be enjoyed by all. Oh how I wish that was true. Steam's accessibility story is an utter and in
by miki123211 3y ago
> but for their never ending support on making sure “gaming” can be enjoyed by all.
Oh how I wish that was true. Steam's accessibility story is an utter and inexcusable piece of garbage. Using Steam with a screen reader is a constant struggle, to the point where people had to write guides [1] on how to go about this. It got a bit better recently, at least on Windows, Mac still sucks. There are plenty of Steam games that a blind person can play, sometimes natively[2][3], sometimes through special accessibility mods[4][5][6]. Not to mention the Steamdeck, which has no accessibility support at all, despite the fact that Linux screen readers do exist[7], and consoles like PS5 and Xbox implement their own[8][9]. Valve really doesn't care.
[1] (outdated) https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/msg291641.html https://www.mail-archive.com/audiogames-reflector@sabahattin...
[2] https://blind.shadows1428.com/ https://blind.shadows1428.com/
[3] https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/19435787154963-Mortal-Kombat-1-Accessibility-Features-A11Y- https://mortalkombatgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articl...
[4] https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire https://github.com/bradjrenshaw/say-the-spire
[5] https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205 https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/16205
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQC6TJkBElY
[7] https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/ https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/getting-started-with-orca/
[8] https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/narrator-on-xbox-one#:~:text=Customize%20your%20options-,Press%20the%20Xbox%20button%20%EE%8F%A3%20to%20open%20the%20guide%3B%20and,turn%20it%20on%20or%20off https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessib....
[9] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-accessibility-settings/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-acces...
- idontknoworcare 3y agoTheir policy is for you to get a Gameboy clip on magnification panel. Ebay has them.
- danShumway 3y agoI don't think that would help blind users. In before Steam has moved off of web interfaces (I haven't checked in a couple of years so they might be doing something different now particularly with big picture mode), but I'm frustrated that we all started building interfaces for native platforms in HTML/Javascript and it didn't lead to embracing any of the accessibility features that those same interfaces would get by default inside of a web browser. To be fair, my understanding is that Linux screenreader support is pretty bad, but it does seem like if a developer is going to the trouble to build the majority of their interface in a semantic XML-like pure-text format, there should probably also be an option to read that text out loud.
- miki123211 3y agoPart of Steam is indeed HTML, and that is the accessible part. They're rewriting more and more of their UI in that technology, and that's definitely a good accessibility move.