research-article

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

Authors:

Ricardo E. Gonzalez Penuela,

Hannah Huddleston,

Matthew Donnelly, and

Brian A. SmithAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '22: Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2022

Article No.: 6, Pages 1 - 16

https://doi.org/10.1145/3517428.3544802

Published: 22 October 2022 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Chang RHung CChen BJain DGuo A(2024)SoundShift: Exploring Sound Manipulations for Accessible Mixed-Reality AwarenessProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661556(116-132)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661556
Guarese RPretty ERenata APolson DZambetta F(2024)Exploring Audio Interfaces for Vertical Guidance in Augmented Reality via Hand-Based FeedbackIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2024.337204030:5(2818-2828)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3372040
Kulik JCairns PKulik J(2023)A Qualitative Investigation of Real World Accessible Design Experiences within a Large Scale Commercial Game Development Studio2023 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333178(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333178

Index Terms

Uncovering Visually Impaired Gamers’ Preferences for Spatial Awareness Tools Within Video Games
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Accessibility
    1. Accessibility systems and tools
    2. Accessibility technologies
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction techniques
      1. Auditory feedback

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cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '22: Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2022

902 pages

ISBN:9781450392587

DOI:10.1145/3517428

Editors:
Jon Froehlich
University of Washington, USA
,
Kristen Shinohara
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
,
Stephanie Ludi
University of North Texas, USA

Copyright © 2022 ACM.

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SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

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Published: 22 October 2022

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ASSETS '22

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ASSETS '22: The 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 23 - 26, 2022

Athens, Greece

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ASSETS '22 Paper Acceptance Rate 35 of 132 submissions, 27%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

Chang RHung CChen BJain DGuo A(2024)SoundShift: Exploring Sound Manipulations for Accessible Mixed-Reality AwarenessProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661556(116-132)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661556
Guarese RPretty ERenata APolson DZambetta F(2024)Exploring Audio Interfaces for Vertical Guidance in Augmented Reality via Hand-Based FeedbackIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2024.337204030:5(2818-2828)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2024.3372040
Kulik JCairns PKulik J(2023)A Qualitative Investigation of Real World Accessible Design Experiences within a Large Scale Commercial Game Development Studio2023 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333178(1-8)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CoG57401.2023.10333178

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