Uncovering Visually Impaired Gamers' Preferences for Spatial Awareness Tools Within Video Games

Abstract

Sighted players gain spatial awareness within video games through sight and spatial awareness tools (SATs) such as minimaps. Visually impaired players (VIPs), however, must often rely heavily on SATs to gain spatial awareness, especially in complex environments where using rich ambient sound design alone may be insufficient. Researchers have developed many SATs for facilitating spatial awareness within VIPs. Yet this abundance disguises a gap in our understanding about how exactly these approaches assist VIPs in gaining spatial awareness and what their relative merits and limitations are. To address this, we investigate four leading approaches to facilitating spatial awareness for VIPs within a 3D video game context. Our findings uncover new insights into SATs for VIPs within video games, including that VIPs value position and orientation information the most from an SAT; that none of the approaches we investigated convey position and orientation effectively; and that VIPs highly value the ability to customize SATs.

References in corpus (1)

• NavStick: Making Video Games Blind-Accessible via the Ability to Look Around

Cited by in corpus (4)

• "The Guide Has Your Back": Exploring How Sighted Guides Can Enhance Accessibility in Social Virtual Reality for Blind and Low Vision People
• ImageAssist: Tools for Enhancing Touchscreen-Based Image Exploration Systems for Blind and Low Vision Users
• Surveyor: Facilitating Discovery Within Video Games for Blind and Low Vision Players
• Accessible Nonverbal Cues to Support Conversations in VR for Blind and Low Vision People