In the world of professional gaming, there is an extraordinary and talented player named Rattlehead, but his real name is Carlos Vasquez.
When he participates in various gaming tournaments in America, his opposing players quickly discover that he is ‘totally blind’.
When their opposing players learn that Carlos is blind, they think they can easily beat him in the fighting game Mortal Kombat, but often end up losing themselves.
Carlos relies on hearing rather than seeing for his offensive and defensive moves while playing games.
“I hear the specific voices of the characters and understand what’s going to happen next,” he says.
Hailing from Houston, Texas, Carlos started playing video games in 1992 at the age of six. But when he was 11, he was diagnosed with a form of glaucoma, an eye condition that slowly robbed him of his sight.
Now 37, Carlos says, “It didn’t happen overnight for me.” Initially, I was able to see shadows of objects i.e. extreme blurring of vision, but over time my vision deteriorated to the point where I was completely blind when I was about 24 years old. was.’
At that time he found that it was almost impossible for him to play most of the important games. Because features that help visually impaired people play games, known as gaming accessibility, did not exist at that time. Such features include screen readers, where people with disabilities are given verbal instructions about what is happening in the game.
When Carlos was in his 20s he was able to play some fighting games such as Mortal Kombat.
“It wasn’t because Mortal Kombat had gaming features for people with disabilities, it was because players like me were able to understand different sounds,” he says. It enabled us to play more games.
For example, he says, ‘The character on the right side of the screen has a slightly louder voice than the character on the left. It helped them figure out what role they were playing.
In 2023, most games have accessibility features, including Forza Motorsport, Diablo Four, The Last of Us, Hearthstone, Street Fighter Six, and the new edition of Mortal Kombat.
Forza Motorsport has a feature called Blind Driving Assists through which blind people are verbally informed about the upcoming turns on the track and their speed. Various noise or audio signals indicate things such as vehicle speed, warning when choosing the wrong lane or changing gears.
A whole system of additional audio feedback is now available for Mortal Kombat, such as telling the distance between characters in games, or if an opponent refuses to play.
Forza Motorsport also includes the latest development in gaming for people with disabilities, a technology called Spatial Audio. Through this feature, sounds are generated during the game so that they can know what is happening in the game.
Professor Brian Smith, an expert in the field, explains that ‘when you hear a sound (in real life), such as a person speaking from a particular location around you, the sound wave reaches your ears at slightly different times. I, arrives in a slightly different volume.’
The sound will then travel through your head to the other ear, and thus the signal will also be slightly altered. Your brain is very good at picking up these signals at different times and realizing: ‘Oh, that means the sound is coming from that place, and it’s the same sound.’
Seven years ago, the Able Gamers charity, which campaigns to get more people with disabilities playing computer games, asked game developer Rockstar how much it would cost to make its Grand Theft Auto V title accessible to people with disabilities.
The company is said to have responded that it would cost $128m (£100m), which it considers too expensive.
As a result, an independent software developer named Liam Irwin decided to take on the challenge, and developed a software add-on, also known as a mod, to make Grand Theft Auto accessible to visually impaired people. To make it more playable.
Liam, who was born blind, set out to work with a team of colleagues to create his mod, called Grand Theft Accessibility.
Among the features they were able to add were voice prompts to give players information about nearby objects, vehicles and pedestrians. Users also get audio feedback about their location, direction and which weapon they have selected.
All this was produced at a fraction of the cost estimated by Rockstar.
Liam says that while it’s not 100 percent, it’s still ‘fun to play through’. And it is loved by the users.
Professor Smith says independent developers like this have played a big role in raising awareness and mobilizing big gaming studios to realize that making games playable for blind players ‘isn’t as difficult as it is. Think.’
However, he adds that many blind people are still underrepresented in the gaming industry. “And so people in the industry don’t realize, or I think they have information, that blind people and game access are at odds with each other. However, conditions are steadily improving.
Carlos Vasquez is not only defeating opponents on Mortal Kombat today. Rather, he now also works as a consultant for the game’s developer, Nether Realm Studios. He says he wishes gaming companies would hire more people like him.
“In the past, developers basically guessed what people with disabilities were looking for, rather than reaching out and consulting them,” he says.
“Companies need to reach out to people who are living this every day and get their feedback, whether it’s in the studio or in the testing phase, but I think the industry as a whole needs to improve. What is needed is to be more transparent, about whether their games will have play features for people with disabilities or not.’