Ep. 29: Up Close with Ross Minor, Blind Accessibility Consultant

For this episode, Alex and Lee take a detour from the film world to discuss the video game landscape with Ross Minor, a blind accessibility consultant. Ross has played a huge role in advancing accessibility for video games within the blind and low vision communities and he discusses his experiences with us.

TRIGGER WARNING: There are discussions of murder, suicide, and domestic abuse early in the episode. Please skip to 5:28 to avoid these subjects if you wish.

Thumbnail Image Description: The words "The Dark Room" in the classic yellow and blue Pokemon Font over the words: "Audio Version" in a blocky 8-bit black font.

Be sure to follow Ross on Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch.
https://rossminor.com
Ross' Accessible Gaming Wiki

Editor Jamie's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43IU2IRX2wU&list=PLAQUjJTUd6PMoYe-3tHHioG9eKSxChIqb

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at darkroomfilmcast@gmail.com
Search for Audio Description availability for any title on the American Council for the Blind's Website!
Find transcripts of our episodes on our hosting site, Buzzsprout!
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
Support us on Patreon!
Follow us on Instagram!
Find us on Facebook!

Transcript

Alex Howard
Hi, everyone. Trigger warning for this episode of The Dark Room. This episode contains discussions of domestic violence, murder, and suicide.

Lee Pugsley
If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or the Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233, or seek out other local resources.

Alex Howard
If you would like to skip that part of the episode, you can skip to 5:28. Thank you, and stay safe out there.

Lee Pugsley
Happy fall, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Dark Room, where two blind cinephiles illuminate the sighted. I'm Lee Pugsley.

Alex Howard
I'm Alex Howard.

Lee Pugsley
And this is a podcast for film lovers of all abilities, hosted by two legally blind guys. And today, we are going to take a slight deviation from our usual film-related content because we have a very special guest with us. We have Ross Minor, who is an accessibility professional who is also blind. He's done a lot in the video game landscape and worked with companies such as Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Rare. Ross, thank you so much for being on our podcast today.

Ross Minor
Yeah, thanks for having me, man. I'm really, really excited to be here. Always love the opportunity to educate about game accessibility, but especially to fellow blind people, because I found that so many blind people don't know that video games are accessible. So I'm really excited to talk.

Alex Howard
Yeah, we're really excited to educate our listeners about the new accessibility features in video games, because I know it's a rather new thing that they've been doing, correct?

Ross Minor
Yeah, no, definitely. There's been snippets here and there throughout history where some steps have been taken to make games accessible, but it really hasn't been this movement until the past five years. So it's very, very recent.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, it seems like it came up really quickly. And truthfully, I didn't even know that games were accessible until, I don't know, probably three years ago.

Ross Minor
Yeah, that's why I do what I do. Yeah, it's great educating people who are excited, and game studios, on accessibility. But I just run across so many blind people who don't know that video games can be accessible and that are currently being made accessible. Because it makes sense to not even consider it just because traditionally in the past, they haven't been in any capacity. So a lot of my work is just educating other blind people that, "Hey, you can do this." And through numbers, the more blind people that want to play, the more that studios notice that.

Alex Howard
I know growing up, Super Smash Brothers and stuff, I wasn't the best at that. I wasn't necessarily legally blind my whole life, but I definitely have always struggled with my vision my whole life. I was never really good at Call of Duty or any of that stuff. Playing video games with my friends. I was always usually the worst one in it. It's nice to know now that they have settings that help that because I had resigned myself to not being able to play video games. Usually when we have guests on, especially guests that are blind, we always like to know what their blind journey was. How did you become blind? How old were you? And how did you find the really cool space that you're working in now? Do you want to tell us a little bit about your blind journey, if you don't mind?

Ross Minor
Yeah. As I'm sure you and many listeners already know, there are many different ways you can go blind, whether it be disease, being born, etc. I was blinded when I was eight. That was back in 2006. I guess I always give people a trigger warning just because it is not a fun story to hear. But in a nutshell, basically, I was blinded from what people these days call a family annihilation. Basically, my father committed like a, or an attempted, like, double murder suicide. My mother was divorcing him, and in an act of retaliation, he shot me in my sleep, did the same to my brother, killed him, and then committed suicide. I was born with perfect vision, but I literally went to sleep sighted and woke up in a hospital bed completely blind. I can't see at all. Sometimes, I usually don't go into this much detail, so cut me off if I shouldn't, but I feel like some blind people may find it interesting. But basically, the bullet entered in my right temple and exited out my left into the palm of my left hand. So my right eye, the retina and optic nerve are pretty much severed. So I can't see anything out of that. And then my left eye had to be removed. So it's a prosthetic. So yeah, that left me totally blind. But that was pretty much how I went blind in a nutshell. As far as how I got to where I'm at today, I mean, man, it's been a wild ride, that's for sure. I guess I'll try to keep it short. But basically, I've always liked video games, even before I was blinded. I had a Nintendo 64, I had a PS2, I'd play Xbox with my friends. I loved it all. And after I was blinded, that love for video games didn't just go away. It's interesting because I feel like if I were blinded as an adult, I probably would have just, logically and somewhat understandably, assumed that, "All right, I can never play video games again." But as a kid, you're almost... You can call it that childlike optimism, or you can call it naïveté. But I wanted to play video games. I was going to find a way to do it. And so, of course, in 2006, Pokémon was huge, and everyone was playing Pokémon, including myself. And I basically got one of my Pokémon games that I used to play and basically memorized the games and memorized... So in Pokémon, whenever you enter a new area, there's usually a different soundtrack for that area, the music changes. And each Pokémon has a cry, and each one sounds different. Each attack sounds different. And through that, I was able to memorize the games and play somewhat independently. And it's such a hyper-specific example because... I'll probably talk about this a bit later, but there's a few key requirements that you need to make a game accessible, one of them being good sound design. So the early Pokémon games were very much playable. I would never say that they were accessible. But if I ran into a wall, for example, my character, it would make a bump sound. It would make this thud sound. So I knew if I just traced my way around the map, I'd eventually to where I was going. I relied a lot on being able to see that map when I could see. That helped me a lot. And then when newer Pokémon games came out where I had never seen those games before, yeah, it was a bit more difficult, but I knew it could be done at that point. Was it really tedious? Absolutely. But I still loved it. So most of my life, I grew up only playing Pokémon. Alex, as you mentioned, Smash as well was somewhat playable in that it had really good sound design, and I used to be able to see the game. And I would say around middle school-ish is when Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out, and that was the first Smash game that was in stereo. For anyone unaware, stereo audio, basically, you can hear where the audio is coming from, like left, center, or right. Fighting games like Smash, being 2D, I could hear if I or an enemy is on the left, center, or right side of the stage.

Alex Howard
That's really interesting.

Ross Minor
Yeah, and it was interesting because you had to have headphones to hear that, unless you had a really good speaker setup, which most people didn't then or now. But the interesting thing was is that so many consoles back then didn't have any like, headphone jack, any way to output like that. So it just so happened that my friend had, I guess, somewhat of a fancy TV, fancy at the time, and it had a headphone jack. And so I could plug my headphones into it, and that gave me the stereo audio I needed. And then that really got me thinking about just the true capability of video games. So like, Smash did that, but then also Pokemon, because when I was playing Pokemon, I was like, "If they just added this, I would be able to play the game a bit better." So then, I would say in high school, I did an AMA on Reddit. And for anyone who doesn't know Reddit, it's like a form website, essentially. And AMA stands for ask me anything. And so you basically post about yourself, who you are, and people ask you questions. And it blew up in ways I didn't really expect it to. And I had mentioned somewhere in the threads that I had played video games and people were interested. They're like, "How do you play video games?" And so I created a YouTube video showing how I played Mortal Kombat. And fighting games in general, it's like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Killer Instinct, are usually pretty accessible because they're 2D, there's not a lot of navigation. But then again, that stereo audio. So fighting games are really, really popular in the blind gaming community. And so I learned about Mortal Kombat in 2011, 2012-ish. Actually, no, a bit later, I think 2013. I was definitely late to the party because, again, back then, I assumed that I couldn't play video games, that I just happened to get really lucky with Pokémon. So I showed people how to play Mortal Kombat. People found it really interesting. The video blew up on YouTube, and that's what got me started creating content on YouTube and educating about just how I play video games. And so for many years, I very much did that as a hobby. And it wasn't until 2018 or so when I really started to get involved in the game accessibility community. Because you could almost argue that I was very much fragmented before then. And so I actually began following other blind gamers on Twitter and other accessibility professionals. And I learned that there was a small group of people who have been pushing for game accessibility throughout the years, but even more so. So I thought that was really cool. It inspired me to keep making content. Then it wasn't until 2017, EA, the Madden division, I was living in Florida at the time, they were interested in making their game blind accessible, or at least adding blind accessibility features to it. I didn't know anything about football.

Alex Howard
Was this Madden 18?

Ross Minor
This was Madden 18, yeah. That was the game I worked on. And so they invited me down to their Orlando headquarters and basically test a game for them and give suggestions and things like that. And that was my first taste of, "Oh, wow, there are game studios that want to make their games accessible." And you've had little tidbits of that, like I mentioned earlier throughout history. So one I always have to mention because it's just, I think it did a lot for the morale in the blind gaming community, is that there is a blind gamer by the name of Carlos Vazquez. He goes by a KH Rattlehead online. Big fighting game player, really good, plays a lot of Mortal Kombat. And the people who make Mortal Kombat also created a fighting game called Injustice. I think back in 2011, when Mortal Kombat 9 was new and big, he went to a tournament and competed. I don't remember how well he did, but he got some screen time. And he did a lot to raise awareness to show that blind people can play fighting games. Well, people from NetherRealm were there. And so they asked them, "Hey, how can we make this game more accessible?" And I don't know all the stuff he suggested, but in their new game, Injustice, (new meaning it came out in 2013 or something)--

Alex Howard
That was the DC one, right?

Ross Minor
Yeah, it was a DC fighting game. They added an accessibility feature, literally just one accessibility feature. But again, it showed that developers were interested in listening. That accessibility feature was literally just a sound. So in Injustice, there are interactables, like things that you can interact with in the environment while you're fighting. And so there's a sound when one is available, so you could press the button and use it. It literally was just that one tiny feature. But again, that was directly responsible because of Carlos. And so fast forward to 2018, EA had reached out to me and I did all that, but I was still very much... I didn't even think it would be a mainstream thing until I started getting involved in the game accessibility community. And it wasn't until The Last of Us, which is a critically acclaimed game created by Sony, or yeah, Sony PlayStation.

Alex Howard
Naughty Dog, right?

Ross Minor
Yes, Naughty Dog. Yeah, Naughty Dog is the studio, but they're PlayStation exclusives, so you can only play them on the PlayStation. The Last of Us 2 came out in 2019 or 2020, I think 2020. And it was the very first fully blind accessible AAA game. AAA meaning high budget. So there were games in the past made by indie developers or maybe even accessibility mods to games that you can play on your computer.

Alex Howard
Can you explain what a mod is?

Ross Minor
Yeah, an accessibility mod is... Or just a mod in general. Basically, whatever game you buy and play on your PC, a mod is a program or a plugin, essentially, that you download, install into the game, and it provides additional functionality. So a lot of able-body or sighted people use it to make characters look different or add new features in the game. And so accessibility mods are exactly what they sound like. They make the game more accessible for whatever disability. And some of those were starting to pop up then. But the blind gaming was very much still relegated to audio games, which are basically what they sound like, games that are audio only. There's a big community online, but it's was shrinking because of how many video games are accessible now. So when the Last of Us came out and I learned that there are blind people involved in working on it, I was like, "Wow, people are really, really listening. This is going to be a snowball effect." And sure enough, it was. But more so it showed me that there was work in this. At the time, I was in the Paralympics and I was competing in swimming. And then the pandemic hit, Tokyo games got delayed. And I was like, Paralympics was fun, but I never really considered myself to be an athlete. I know that sounds strange, but I just did it because I was good at it. And even good is subjective. But I did it because I could, but it wasn't my passion by any means. Gaming was my passion. And so I decided to retire from the Paralympics and continue going to college and break into the gaming accessibility industry because it was something I very much believed would continue to grow. Because when it comes to creating games, there's what's called a development life cycle, where-- you know, I won't get too technical with it. But with anything that you're building, especially video games or software, you have the blueprints, you have the mockups and everything, and then you have to build it. And changes can only be made so far before you have to finalize the game and release it to the public. And so generally with gaming, with video games, it's like three years. That's the life cycle. And so 2020 is when the last OS2 came out. And so basically, it's like, all right, we got three years to see how studios react to this game coming out, having all these accessibility features. How are they going to react to a game that can be completed from beginning to end without any sighted assistance? And sure enough, in 2023, of course, 2022 and '21, there are some gems. But 2023, you had the new Mortal Kombat that came out. It was the most accessible fighting game ever. You had Forza Motorsport, the very first blind accessible racing game. You had Spider-Man 2, which is blind accessible in many ways. There's even a blind Street Fighter player because Street Fighter, while not as accessible as Mortal Kombat, it has blind accessibility features. And as a result, this guy literally won a Street Fighter tournament. I think his name is BlindWarriorSven. I forget where it was. I want to say Japan, maybe. I think that's where the tournament was. But just for context, Street Fighter is one of the most competitive fighting games out there. It's much bigger than Mortal Kombat in general. It just has a much bigger fan base than Mortal Kombat. To have a blind guy win a tournament is just massive. He did it because, yeah, fighting games were already somewhat accessible, but also because of these accessibility features. That's pretty where I am now, I began marketing myself as someone who wants to help make games accessible. And so as a result, I've helped design new features for games. I've helped implement audio descriptions into the games, which I'm sure many people didn't even know was a thing. Yeah, audio descriptions are in video games now. And I've given presentations at South by Southwest or the Game Accessibility Conference about game accessibility. So it's very, very much a huge movement that's happening. And so I know that was a lot. It was a massive info dump, but that's where I am today. That's how I got here.

Lee Pugsley
First of all, your whole journey into the gaming industry and just even with what happened and how you lost your vision, I mean, all of it's really interesting and fascinating. I think it's just cool that I'm a firm believer that for any of us in the blind community, it's like, we can still find a way to do what we love to do. I love hearing about people like you that just do it. Going to The Last Of Us, too, when that came out, and maybe even touching on other games, too. Because I haven't played video games in a very long time for visual reasons, and just assuming that that's not something that I could do anymore, when you refer to blind accessibility features, can you just go into a little more detail on what those features are? I'm genuinely curious because...

Ross Minor
Yeah. With The Last Of Us 2, or just blind accessibility in general, I always say that there are three things to make a game blind-accessible, generally. That is good sound design to let you know when certain events happen in the game; a screen reader, so you can actually read all the text in the game; and then navigation assistance, so you can actually know where you are going in the game. Sometimes you don't need NavAssist because like, fighting games don't need NavAssist. Other times, like sound design isn't as important. It very much, at the end of the day, depends on the game. So it's not like a one size fits all option, as with most things accessibility. For The Last of Us, specifically, I should have said earlier, but this isn't an easy game. This is an action adventure, almost horror game. Basically, the game is about a zombie apocalypse, essentially, and navigating your way through that. That's a very, very basic description. I won't get into the story or spoil anything, but it's a story-driven game. It's very violent, it's very gory. Many times, I know blind people, especially myself, feel like sometimes we're put on training wheels with certain things. And that's not just on game accessibility, just making things accessible in the first place. But this is very much not that. As such, there are first-- like, navigating the game. This is a story-driven game. You are navigating through the world. Their first attempt at doing this, we like to call it this golden path, where basically you can press a button and it'll point you in the direction of the objective you need to go. Then once you reach, almost like, we'll call them a node, and I'll explain that in a second. Once you reach a node, it will play a sound to let you know you need to press the NavAssist button again to point you in the right direction. It's almost like connect the dots, if anyone's familiar with that. I know it's a visual example, but basically, there are all these points, and it will bring you from point A to point B to point C to point D and bring you through the level. It's like a golden path that keeps you on the path. It doesn't mean you can't deviate from the path, but that's how navigation works. But then there are, of course, items in the game. There is a button you can press that almost sends out this sonar ping. And you can hear where all the items are and press a button and it will guide you to it. There are sound cues for when you need to break a window, when you need to vault over something, when you need to climb under something, et cetera. There are so many different ones. Then finally, there is a screen reader, so you can actually know what you're reading in the game. But that's it in a nutshell. Again, it was just groundbreaking for all the games to come.

Alex Howard
I played a little bit of The Last of Us 2. I have a PS4, which I noticed on the PS4, it's great because on the menus, you can turn on the voiceover and it'll read you what you're selecting on the menu. That's cool in itself. But then in the actual game, the reason I bought Last of Us 2. I mean, I watched the show, and I know the remaster of the first game has the accessibility features, but that's only on the PS5. So I bought Last Of Us 2 to experience the accessibility features. And I think the first thing that stood out to me is I have a lot of trouble with the... They have the clips in between where you're playing. And a lot of times there's parts where it's like, oh, you need to press a button a bunch of times to get through part. And they skip that because I can't see what button is telling you to press rapidly. Then the other thing I noticed is the colors, you can invert them. So I think when I was playing, my characters were big purple blocks, and then I was going towards the yellow part of the map. It made things a lot easier to visually see because I know Last Of Us is a very dark game.

Ross Minor
Yeah, exactly. On the parts where you have to press specific buttons, there is actually a sound cue for that. There is a learning curve to playing video games. There's a learning curve for most assistive technology. You know what I mean? Screen readers. People don't just pick up a screen reader and know how to use it. There's a learning curve. Unfortunately, it's the same for gaming. And so what I've found, even now, when developers are making games and making them accessible, they assume a lot of things are implicitly known. They assume that you've played video games before. But for many blind gamers, this is their very first time playing any game.

Alex Howard
Especially for The Last Of Us 2.

Ross Minor
Yeah. It was my first time playing a story-driven action-adventure game since I was blinded. So it's been well over a decade since. And so because of that, sometimes I feel they don't explain accessibility features enough within the game. So that's something I feel like should be worked on more. I don't blame you for not even doing that. Like there are so many things... Even when I play video games, I stream on Twitch, and I'll be doing something whatever way, and someone in chat will be like, "Oh, you know you could do this, right?" I'll just be like, "Oh, I had no idea you could do that. Thank you for telling me." So there's very much a learning curve, but it's still tons of fun, in my opinion.

Alex Howard
Is the blind gaming community, is it pretty large? Are you connected to other blind gamers?

Ross Minor
Oh, yeah. It's very large. It's large, but it's also fragmented because there's not really... There used to be AudioGames.net, and it's still around. But again, it's mainly audio game-focused. There is discussion there about mainstream gaming, but it's a really old website site, and there are a lot of issues with it that I won't go into, but it's been around for a couple of decades, and so it's starting to show its age. Then there are Reddit communities, but again, it's fragmented. But then the biggest communities are on Discord. For anyone who doesn't know what Discord is, it's basically a chat client that centers around... It could be used for anything, but it's targeted towards gamers. Basically, there are servers, which are basically different sections... I'm trying to think the best way to describe it. But basically, you can create a server and then have channels within that server, voice channels, text channels, and people can join, you can chat in different channels. There are many different blind gaming servers. But the thing is that it's all contained within Discord. It's not a website. It's not something you can Google search. And so as such, there's a ton of good information on there, but many blind people don't use Discord. Many blind people have never even heard of it. So it's very much fragmented. I've actually been working on a project. It's technically out right now. I haven't worked on it in several weeks just because I've been busy with work and travel. I created a website called AccessibleGaming.wiki, and the goal of it is to be a community-driven website where all info about game accessibility can be written down. So obviously, since I'm blind, I specialize in blind accessibility, but my hope is that someone who is deaf will come along and make sections about deaf accessibility for XYZ game and so on. So it's up right now. It's very sparse, so to say, but it's there, and I'm hoping people will start contributing to it. I have a lot of work that I still want to get done on it, but the goal is, yeah, like someone can search, "Is so and so blind accessible?" Or insert game name, Blind Accessibility, and the wiki will show up just to make it easier for people to actually get started.

Alex Howard
It has all the game settings and stuff on there, like what accessibility settings the game has and stuff like that?

Ross Minor
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Alex Howard
We will definitely link to that in the description.

Ross Minor
Yeah, please do. It's an up and coming project, but I'm really passionate about it, and I think it will go a long way. Right now, I think the pages that have been worked on the most are the Spider-Man 2 page and the Diablo 4 page. That one has a lot of info on it. I really like the idea of it because there are so many different pockets of the blind accessibility community that have a lot of good info that needs be shared. So, yeah, I'm excited to see that project grow.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, I think that's a really cool idea of just trying to get all that information into one space. And hopefully, as the word spreads, people will see the benefit of that. I even remember for a while, I didn't even know what audio description was. And I didn't start using audio description until 2018, and I just didn't know about it. And so it's like, that's a more widespread thing. But I mean, with gaming, it's like, yeah, let's start spreading that awareness. And in regards to spreading awareness, I know that you have played a part in advancing video game accessibility. What does that look like for you the last couple of years? Is it more so talking to people within the video game community that are making the decisions in development, or does it involve you playing a video game and then reviewing it, giving them notes? Or are there other ways that maybe I'm not aware of that you've been playing a part behind the scenes with accessibility?

Ross Minor
Yeah, it's really all of the above. As I mentioned before, I speak at a lot of conferences, and I think that has raised a lot of awareness in and of itself, because that's half of the battle, right? It's just awareness. Get people thinking about it in the first place. But primarily it is working with developers. Yeah, that could take many forms. It could be, "Hey, can you play, test this game and write up a report and send it back to us?" Or it could be, "Hey, can you give a presentation to our UX team for this game?" Or, "Hey, can we do a Q&A with you for this game?" It takes many different forms like that. Or on occasions, they'll have you come in and design features from the ground up. One thing that I did semi-recently, the Studio Rare creates a game called Sea of Thieves. It's like a pirate role-playing action game. That game is blind-playable in the sense that you can't play by yourself, but it is a multi-player team-based game. So most people do play with friends. And so as such, they have tried to make it blind accessible in the ways that are easiest to first. So if you played with a group of people, you would have a role on that team. So for example, you're on a ship. There's going to be someone who needs to man the cannons if an enemy comes by. There's going to need to be someone who can look at the map and navigate. And there's going to be someone who needs to steer the ship. And that is what they've actually leaned into, is making that blind accessible. So there are a lot of different things I can go into about Sea of Thieves, but one of the features that I helped design is essentially, while steering the ship while out at sea, there are rocks in the ocean. And being blind, you don't want to run your ship into rocks or everyone's going to sink. We basically designed a feature where if you turn it on in settings, you will be able to hear the waves or the water lapping up against the side of the rocks, and it'll be in stereo. They amplified that sound. And so when you are steering the ship, you can hear the rocks out at sea and navigate around them accordingly. So things like that really, really are good design and are, at the end of the day, pretty easy things to implement. And so those are the features I do.

Alex Howard
It also seems like it's seamless, whereas the sighted audience, it makes it more realistic for them as well.

Ross Minor
Exactly. It's very much accessible by design as opposed to creating an accessibility feature specifically for this disability. There are many different philosophies when it comes to accessibility, especially when it comes to creating video games.

Alex Howard
Can you explain how does audio description work in video games? I know in movies, they don't talk over dialog. Is it the same rules for video games? Or is audio description only in the cut scenes and not when you're actually playing? Or how does that all work?

Ross Minor
Yeah, good question. So a bit of background, I work with a company called Descriptive Video Works. And so far they've been... Oh, that's cool.

Alex Howard
I think we connected at the...

Ross Minor
Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, we did. I guess also for context, Alex, you and I met at a Slamdance event, a film event a couple months ago at this point.

Alex Howard
Yeah.

Ross Minor
And Lee and I met at the gym. We just happened to run into each other. So we both live in the same area, so it's really funny. Small world. So, I work with Descriptive Video Works. I'm on their advisory board, but then I also do audio description narration. And so they have been responsible for most of the audio description in video games. I think all except for one game. So they've added audio description to Forza Motorsport, Spider-Man 2, Mortal Kombat, both of the Last of Us games. And yes, it is very much, pretty much the same convention as a movie. So considering that cut scenes in video games are literally just movies, they follow all the same standards. There are some times where audio descriptions are almost, like, flow seamlessly into the gameplay. It hasn't -- I would love to see for a game to do this. It hasn't been yet where there are audio descriptions going as you're playing the game, as you're able to press buttons. Or, what I mean "they flow seamlessly" is like, let's say you're playing Mortal Kombat and you're in the middle of a fight. In Mortal Kombat, they have, I keep wanting to call them by their old name, but I think they're called fatal blows, or basically a big super move. They do a lot of damage, but they're literally a cut scene within the middle of a fight, and those are described. You'll be fighting, you'll do your super move, it'll describe all the gory details, and then you'll go back to fighting. It's really cool to see that.

Alex Howard
That sounds awesome.

Ross Minor
Oh, it's awesome. I mean, anyone who doesn't know anything about Mortal Kombat, it is a very, very gory game, one of the goriest games you could find.

Alex Howard
As a horror fan, I appreciate that.

Ross Minor
Oh, yeah. They describe all of it. They leave nothing to the imagination. It's a huge passion. I've always loved the Mortal Kombat, and so just to see how accessible the new one is is absolutely incredible.

Alex Howard
Then for Last of Us, do they describe the creatures? I know, so, for people that don't know, in Last of Us, you're like, sneaking around to try and attack the zombie-like things, and they have a really unique look to them. Do they describe that at all?

Ross Minor
Yeah, they do in the sense. You know, they follow general AD standards, in that when they appear for the first time, they'll describe them. So, like, clickers, for example, is a type of infected. If I remember correctly, they have this almost like, fungus.

Alex Howard
Yeah, like the cordyceps.

Ross Minor
Yeah, over their head and everything. And I'm pretty sure they're actually blind, which is kinda funny. But it describes those at the beginning of the game. But then later on, if there's a cut scene, it'll just say "a clicker." You know what I mean? But it very much does describe them. Yeah.

Lee Pugsley
With the advancements that have been taking place within accessibility for video games, do you ever see a time where audio description would be a part of the actual game itself, like when someone's navigating around an open world area or something? Because I know you said right now, audio description isn't happening when you're actually moving through the game.

Ross Minor
Yes.

Lee Pugsley
Do you think that could happen?

Ross Minor
I think it could. Many people have different theories on how to implement this, whether it's possible or not. I'm of the belief that it is, and I'm going to get technical with it. But many people say, "How can it be done when games are so dynamic and so you don't... like, they're not sequential so how would the AD know when to play?" But the example I give is, let's say you're playing, I don't know, Grand Theft Auto, right? A game that's notoriously not accessible for blind people at all, has no audio descriptions.

Alex Howard
Wouldn't that be great if the new one had it?

Ross Minor
I know, right? It would be. But basically, you're walking, you're driving around a city, and a car crashes in front of you. Well, you may ask, "How are you going to describe that? How are you going to have the right lines?" And I would argue that programmatically is how you would do it. And so what I mean by that is, let's say the car that crashes in front of you is a blue Corvette. Programmatically, with code, you will be able to see that the car is blue. I'm not doing the best at describing this. I'm trying to simplify it. But basically, when you code things, you try to make it legible. So when you have all these assets, so assets meaning the design of the car, how the car looks, the fact that the car is blue, the fact that it looks like a Corvette, all of that is written in code. And so in code, you will have color equals blue, car equals Corvette, etc. And let's say this blue Corvette crashes into something. Well, then all you would have to do is add another attribute to that Corvette where it's like, audio description line equals Corvette crashes. And so it wouldn't be specific, like exactly word for word what is happening, what you're seeing. But it could very much be like "a Corvette in front of you crashes" and things like that. And so all that to say, I know that's a bit technical. I believe it can be done. It's very much experimental. I do think we'll get there because to be honest, I didn't expect game studios to embrace audio description as quickly as they did. I thought it would take many years for that to happen, but here we are, and multiple games have it now. So I do think that it can happen. I also believe that there can also be like audio description by design through a screen reader in the sense that almost no games right now do this except for audio games. Because they're made by blind people, usually. And so blind people know what blind people need. I would love for screen readers to actually describe more about what you're walking around. There are audio descriptions for cut scenes, but when you're actually walking through a level, you don't get anything. So what if you were just walking around a city and you were at an intersection and it read the intersection name, just like real life. Or let's say you passed a car and it said the car model and year and things like that. Or let's say you walked past a storefront and it read that out a lot. It's not audio description, but it's still by design when it's telling you what's around you, that is a way of describing it. So I think those things could be used in conjunction to, yeah, really describe your environment. So I really hope that something like that can be done.

Alex Howard
You're almost talking about if you were to go to Disneyland to get the audio description device and put on navigation, it'll tell you where you're walking by like that, right?

Ross Minor
Yeah, exactly. 

Lee Pugsley
I don't know, to me, that seems like it should be pretty doable. And once again, I don't understand the technical side of all of this, but just with apps like Seeing AI or different apps that you scan your environment and it'll tell you what the camera is passing as it's passing. So if we already have that built in with phone apps and stuff and that can capture that, it's like, if screen readers can capture things that way, then it seems like they should be able to capture on video games to describe those environmental attributes, too.

Ross Minor
I agree. I don't think there's any reason you literally can't implement a blind GPS similar to like VoiceVista or Microsoft Soundscape or whatever into a video game. I think the thing with game development is there are deadlines. At the end of the day, they're trying to make money. And so what a lot of people don't understand is that if a feature is implemented into a game, like audio description, they had to code that in. They had to set up that infrastructure to allow audio description to be put in. But they have it now. It's, it's programmed. They have it for the next game. And so it's much, much easier and quicker to implement in the next game. Same with screen readers. Screen readers are very difficult currently to implement into a game and require a lot of coding. But once they're in, they're in. And so as a result, like Ubisoft, for example, most of their games that come out now have screen readers because it surely took them a long time for the first game. But now, out of nowhere, all their games have screen readers because it's so simple. Or not simple, of course, but it's so much easier for them to implement. All that to say, just because the feature isn't in now, it doesn't mean it's not being worked on because it just takes time. But once they've made it, they have it and it works in the future, which is a good thing.

Alex Howard
If we have a blind listener who is like, "Oh, my God, video games are accessible. I didn't know that," and they want to get started, what console do you recommend and what would you say are the top three games to start your blind journey with?

Ross Minor
Good question. So it's funny because in the past, I would have said Xbox all the way because they actually were the first to come up with a screen reader on their console. But now I would actually say PlayStation. There are pros and cons to both, or to Xbox versus PlayStation versus PC. And then there's Nintendo, which Nintendo is notoriously bad about accessibility. So I almost consider it just...

Alex Howard
Which is ironic because you were just saying that, like, Pokémon and Super Smash were the ones you started with.

Ross Minor
Yeah. And I'm not the only blind person to play Pokémon or Smash. And so you think Nintendo, it's a whole thing. So there's a lot of factors. If you have a capable PC, you know, because video games, depending on the game, some are really easy to run. You could run on a calculator, others, you need a beefy computer to run. But if you have a good enough PC, I would say go for PC because Xbox games are almost always cross platform onto PC because Windows is a Microsoft product. If you use a Mac, unfortunately, the game accessibility scene there is dead just because gaming in general on Apple devices is dead for many reasons. So many Xbox, if not most, Xbox games, you can play on PC. And then PlayStation exclusive games usually come to PC eventually. And so it's the best of both worlds if you can afford it. But it is a bit more like technical in the sense that you have to be familiar with computers and know that you have the right specs and everything. However, something that PCs have that consoles do not have are mods. And so you are given a larger pool of games to select from on PC because you have the capability to mod games. And so I would recommend PC. And then if not, consoles are still great. So between PlayStation and Xbox, I would say PlayStation for sure. They just have more accessible games. So on PlayStation, in terms of games that are just completely blind accessible through and through, you have Mortal Kombat, you have the Last of Us games, you have As Dusk Falls, which is a game I worked on.

Alex Howard
What is that game about?

Ross Minor
That's a really fun game. So it's a story-based, narrative-driven, choose-your-own-adventure type game. So there's no navigation. You primarily, through the entire game, select options from a menu. But there are cut scenes in the game and you follow the story. But the options you choose impact what happens in the story. It's really fun because it's multi-player as well. You could play with friends, you could play with family. If you play with friends and family, and the vote on which option to pick is tied, it'll shuffle it. There is now audio description in the game as well. Then you can even play online while streaming with other people as well. So it's just a really, really fun game. It has lots of replay-ability because after each chapter in the story, you can see how other people voted and what your choices mean about or say about you. It's just a fun game. And that was a game that used to only be on Xbox, but now is on PlayStation as well. And so, yeah, for PlayStation, to reiterate, completely blind accessible. You have Mortal Kombat, As Desk Falls, The Last Of Us games. Then you have games that are very, very playable, but sometimes you may need assistance. So Spider-Man 2, very, very accessible, but there are some places where it's a bit more difficult. It's not the most accessible. And that's why I created the Game Accessibility Wiki, for info like that, because I have articles linked on the Wiki for those problematic areas of Spider-Man, too.

Alex Howard
Is Hogwarts Accessible?

Ross Minor
No, it is not. It has blind accessibility features, but I wouldn't even call it playable, unfortunately. But then there's Diablo 4, which, again, that's on Xbox and PC. But if we're just talking about a console that has the most, Diablo 4 has a really good screen reader. It's very much playable, but it takes a lot of patience because there's no navigation assistance. However, it is being worked on, and it is set to be released in October. So next month, there will navigation assistance in Diablo.

Alex Howard
And that's only on Xbox or that's PS5 as well?

Ross Minor
No, that's on all platforms. But again, if you're wanting a console that has everything or the most things, we're talking consoles alone, because otherwise, of course, I would say, play on PC. But the most just accessible games, regardless of console, of course, are the Last of Us games. I would say Mortal Kombat, and it is. But like, fighting games have already been playable. This one just takes it to a new level and it's very, very accessible accessible now.

Alex Howard
Is it just called Mortal Kombat or what number is it?

Ross Minor
So, no, you're good. It's actually confusing because they recently did a reboot. They did their whole multiverse thing. I'm not really a fan of it, but you know I'm talking about, like the stuff that Marvel does. So they're calling it Mortal Kombat 1. So it's like a reboot of the franchise. And the only game that Microsoft has that is completely blind accessible, that is exclusive to Microsoft, so either Xbox or PC, because best of both worlds, is Forza Motorsport. And that is a racing simulation game. So it has a very high skill curve, but it is 100% accessible. And in fact, since it's a simulation, you can buy what's called a racing rig, which is a wheel that you can mount on your desk, for example, and you have pedals that go on the ground. And you literally have the feeling of driving a race car because the wheel vibrates and everything and the pedals feel like actual pedals. But the wheel is more than just a vibration. If your car spins out, your wheel will spin out. It very much feels like driving a race car. It was quite literally the very first time a blind person could get the feeling of driving a car in a safe environment at full speed. You know what I mean? It's different from trusting a sighted person to help you drive in a parking lot where you have to be careful. It's not like that. You know what I mean? That is the only game on Xbox that is not on PlayStation, but there are actually rumors that Forza Motorsport is coming to PlayStation. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's just a rumor. So, yeah, to reiterate, I would say The Last of Us, Forza, Mortal Kombat. If you're new to gaming, because these are all AAA games, and they take some skill. If you're new to gaming, though, I would absolutely suggest As Dusk Falls. I think that's a great game. On PC, there are a lot of accessibility mods that I should mention. Some are more difficult to use, some are a lot easier. And some of these games are pretty easy to run, so you don't need a powerful computer. The popular game Hearthstone has an accessibility mod that makes it completely accessible. Stardew Valley has an accessibility mod, so that's a really popular game. Very, very easy to run. There are even accessibility mods for old Pokémon games. So if you run them on an emulator, which is-- an emulator is essentially a program on your computer that you can load the game into and play as if you're playing it on the original console. There are Mods to make Pokémon games accessible.

Alex Howard
So like the original Pokémon game?

Ross Minor
So currently, Generations one through three. So red, blue, yellow, gold, silver, crystal, fire-red, leaf-green, ruby, sapphire, emerald.

Alex Howard
That is so cool. I grew up on yellow.

Ross Minor
Yeah, no, exactly. It's amazing. And yeah, there are just so many. There's accessibility mods for World of Warcraft. Yeah, there are a bunch. But if we're talking consoles, I would absolutely recommend PlayStation. I could get into so many different accessibility features. And if you have an Xbox, it's not bad at all. You still have Diablo, Mortal Kombat. Those games are on all platforms. You have As Dusk Falls, then you still have Forza Motorsport. But the level of detail that goes into PlayStation games is really good. God of War: Ragnarok is very playable. There are a lot of parts that are difficult. However, PlayStation is releasing God of War: Ragnarok on PC, and so I'm hoping that maybe they added some updates to make it more playable. I actually recently got a code for the game, so I'm going to shortly see if that is the case. I'm hoping because it is very close to being completely accessible.

Alex Howard
You do reviews and videos on your Instagram, too, right?

Ross Minor
Not on my Instagram. I primarily do them on my YouTube. I also sometimes write articles on my website, RossMinor.com. But YouTube is where I do accessibility reviews. I usually write my articles if a game is close, but not the most accessible, because I would hate to create a video and just be like, "And it's not accessible." It's just what's the point in my opinion? If I'm going to create a video about a game being accessible, I want people to hear how it's accessible. But then that's also what I do my Twitch for, is for blind people to just come in and chat and ask me questions like, "Hey, how do you play XYZ game? Is this game accessible?" Et cetera. And so, yeah, my YouTube is the same everywhere. It's youtube.com/RossMinor, Twitch.tv/RossMinor, all that good stuff.

Alex Howard
Great. We will link all of that in the description. Lee, do you have any last questions for Ross?

Lee Pugsley
No. I feel like I've learned so much from this conversation. Thank you so much for being here, Ross, and just thank you for just helping to advance accessibility within the video game field. Hopefully, more blind and low vision people will start tapping into some of those games now that they have an awareness that there is accessibility in the gaming world.

Ross Minor
Yeah, absolutely. You guys, literally, we all live in the same area, so I'm always happy to give in-person demos if you guys are curious about a game or want to test a game before you buy it, because that's a really real thing of buying a game and then realizing it's not really for you. So you can always hit me up whenever. I'd be happy to help out.

Alex Howard
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. And we will definitely link you, like I said, in the description. Thank you for coming on and being so vulnerable. Your story was very moving, and I think you give a lot of great info. So thank you so much.

Ross Minor
Yeah, no problem. Thank you as well.

Lee Pugsley
If any of you listeners out there want to get a hold of me and Alex, you can always reach us at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. Once again, that's DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube @DarkRoomFilmCast.

Alex Howard
Ross, do you want to give any other contact info for yourself, or they can just reach out to you through YouTube or things like that?

Ross Minor
Yeah. I actually have all my social media links in one place. It's just RossMinor.com/links, and you'll find just all my social media, my Discord links. If you want to join my Discord, you can ask me questions there. Yeah, you can find it all right there.

Alex Howard
Great. And we also want to thank Matt Lauterbach and All Senses Go for creating captions and helping us make our podcast more accessible. We'd like to thank Jamie, which is a GuyOnAWire on YouTube for editing our podcast.

Lee Pugsley
And that will wrap it up for today. Thank you all so much for listening, and we will see you here next time on The Dark Room.

Alex Howard
Thanks, guys.