Cadet 227 - Developer Diary Entry #1
Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:40AM Listening to: Nothing.
I woke up this morning to find that the project has been fully funded! It only took a bit of elbow grease and within a few days of the project’s opening it has reached its goal. I will have a final list of contributors in both the game and developer diary for sure. I am very excited to work on this project and overcoming any of the challenges that it may throw my way. Thanks again to the contributors and your generosity! It speaks volumes, it does!
So because it’s officially underway, I thought I’d go and start a developer diary to chronicle the process, things I learn and challenges that I’ll run into. I’ll have clips and demos of things for people to check out as they get done.
One e-mail I received this morning was from a visually impaired computer user, who I will refer to as DT at this time. DT wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for your message. Unfortunately, even if this is accessible, it is unlikely to work for visually impaired people since Flash is not an efficient technology for us.
DT
This didn’t discourage me, but rather set off neurons in my brain and the question valves. Why is Flash not an efficient technology for the visually impaired? Is it because something like JAWS is not able to properly read the contents within a Flash media file? Is it because there are few sites that have designed their layouts to properly combine standard web elements with Flash elements? Is it because there’s no real need for Flash for visually impaired computer users since Flash was originally meant to be for a “rich multimedia experience for the internet”? How useful is an animated banner is Flash in this situation, right?
I’ve sent a reply back asking a few of these questions in hopes of finding answers that will help me tailor the game design to better approach the ultimate goal. At the very least, Flash can export an executable file, which also allows me to distribute the game as a physical download.
I will send a message to San Francisco’s Exploratorium later this week as well. I remember they had a vision deprivation obstacle course when I was younger. It would be interesting to see if they could house a computer with speakers in a completely dark room and have this game running. I know that if I was put in that situation, the overwhelming darkness and ambient sounds would freak me out completely. The trailer isn’t “scary” or “chilling” to me anymore, but it’s also because I’ve heard it a few dozen times already. The first few times I listened to the final mixdown I couldn’t close my eyes.
In any case, again, the project is now funded. I will start fleshing out the entire story and script for the game. There are a few key moments I have planned that should have a player jamming on their keyboard (who doesn’t love the traditional Track and Field button masher?) and being fully engulfed in audio fear. Well, that’s the plan anyway.
Related Link: Cadet 227
Reader Comments (11)
You might want to look at Silverlight's accessibility story; it may be better suited than Flash.
See this short presentation for an overview -- http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL51
Maybe it's because Flash objects are a black box, unreadable by screen readers? If that's the case I imagine the visually impaired have gotten pretty cynical about Flash in general.
Hmm. Would a screen-reader really need to access the contents of a game such as Cadet 227? I would imagine all necessary instructions would be embedded as audio anyway.
Right, I was offering an explanation for why blind people might hypothetically dislike Flash in general.
But actually, even just finding and initializing the game's Flash object might be tough, I really don't know how browser operation software for the blind works.
Ah, yeah I see your point there; I'm not familiar with how this stuff works either.
Perhaps the problem is finding the flash object to focus it for keyboard/mouse input.
Linking directly to a plain .swf should solve this problem, since there wouldn't be anything else to focus in the browser window/tab.
For the most part I agree that Flash is very difficult for screen readers and the like. However, this is mostly due to the developers themselves not placing that sort of thing in.
CS4 seems to have upgraded the accessibility a bit (http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flash/) but I remember it being available in earlier iterations. It's not perfect, but I'm sure it will help significantly for this sort of project.
Namuol makes a good point, though of course I don't know the way you will be structuring the game.
I'm glad to see something like this being created and look forward to more development.
Cool work Alex, I've also been working on a binaural sound-only narrative game for Natal for the last 4 months so curious to see how "Cadet 227" turns out and your approaches to this idea. There are alot of great precedents to this, as somebody has noted Kenji Eno + Warp JP have done some fantastic work particularly with "Realsound: Kaze No Regret" which was a 3-disc radio opera type game that had no graphics for both Saturn / Dreamcast in '97. You should definitely check that one out an' the approach in Enemy Zero is cool as well.
For us, we're most excited about the idea of engaging the players imaginations and I suppose though I come from a background making accessible media as well for the vision-impaired, our inspiration runs along the lines of the richness of experiencing early Infocom games.
Good luck, love to chat some more about game design stuff regards navigation, sound location, and narrative if you're up for it.
Cheers,
-- Chuan
Re: Accessibility for Blind Web Browsers
Typically, blind web surfers use screenreader software or custom browsers such as JAWS which do not support Flash. The screenreader software reads aloud all the text and vision impaired users typically 'read' at a high tempo [ imagine speech at fast forward speed ] with all content picked up in a linear fashion. Later versions of Flash have accessibility features but these are more akin to closed captions for video and proper labelling for assets inside your movie, so might be best to check these things out before starting in Flash.?
An alternative could be just to do this all in HTML5/Javascript as you can have a soundplayer up quite easily in Javascript and also detect keys pressed and do all the logic while keeping it accessible. Anyway, just an idea and some thoughts from working on web content for blind people. Of course it will be exciting to see how you come up with your design solution for this, and may "a thousand flowers blossom" ..!
-- Chuan
You have done it once again! Superb writing.
Wow I am literally the first comment to your awesome writing?!?
Wow I'm actually the only reply to your awesome read!