I may get modded for this but I just have to say this. Some GS users are incredibly close minded. An article today on GS pointed out a suit in which a visually impaired gamer has asked Sony to implement better accessibility features for visually impaired gamers. The comments below the article were disgusting. First off, it was almost completely assumed that this person was blind. Careful reading of the article, though, would have explained that this person had impaired visual processing. That isn't the same thing as being blind. So this person essentially has really bad eyesight. And he wants to be able to game. Well good for him. He deserves to be able to play games just like the rest of us. The GS commenters seemed to say that this person was merely being an **** for requesting very basic features like a compass with audio cues, larger, more high contrast mission markers, and voiceover detailing mission objectives and items collected. These are very simple features to implement, and speaking that the suit was for an MMO it would be simple to patch these features in.

As a disabled gamer I always work towards making games enjoyable and fair to the most people possible. For the number of people that have visual, audio, or other forms of disabilities, the number of games with accommodations is very small. In today's world there is no reason why all text in a game can't have VO. You don't need a professional actor for things like mission objectives, and in most cases you can safely turn the VO off. But for those that need it, having a member of the team just read through all of the text so that visually impaired people can complete the game isn't all that tough. Likewise, offering very vivid visual cues when it comes to mission objectives is an easy change. A simple option could toggle on a high contrast mode for quest giving characters, important environmental objects and the like. As a designer I can assure you that something like this wouldn't take that long. The high contrast models don't have to be that detailed because the people using them wont be able to see the detail in the first place.

As far as an audio compass, again, that is not the hardest thing to program. I could program an audio compass in ten minutes. Also, it would be simple to say incorporate some sort of rumble feedback when near an area of importance. This would be especially true for finding hidden collectables that may be small and difficult to see. By having the controller rumble when near the item, or maybe by having a specific noise play louder and louder the closer you get to an item, you could make collecting COG Tags, or treasures, or skulls, or what have you enjoyable for people who maybe can't see a tiny glimmer in a huge battlefield.

Finally, I really want to advocate the use of additional visual cues for those that are red/green colorblind. Many of these people have trouble knowing what button to hit when a game simply says, "Hit the red button." If all the buttons are either green or red then they may be at a loss on which button to press, and since many button-pressing objectives are timed, this could quickly lead to death. Also, when a game has doors that are marked green or red depending on if they are open or closed they should put the red and green marks in different locations, similar to stop lights, so that people who can't tell the difference in the colors can notice that those doors with the light in the top slot lit can be opened and those with light in the bottom slot can't. Again, things like this are easy to design but can allow additional people to enjoy a game. So to game designers out there, please make games enjoyable to all types of people. Later guys.