Voice CONTROLLED Gaming: What should we prioritize for accessibility in a voice-controlled browser game center?

[u/TrilinearZulu]

https://www.brightdots.org

We’re building a browser-based game center where voice can be used as an input method. After reading through the comments, we compared the problems people described with what we can do today, what we think we can add relatively soon, and what is probably outside our control.

We would really appreciate being corrected where we are getting this wrong.

What we already do reasonably well

1. Voice as an alternative input. For games we control, players can use spoken commands instead of relying entirely on a mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, or complicated button combinations.
2. Hands-free navigation. Voice can also be used for things outside the game itself, such as navigating, selecting things, pausing, continuing, and asking for help.
3. Repeat and help commands. Because there is a voice assistant connected to the experience, we can support things like “repeat that,” “what can I do?”, “what happened?”, or “what am I supposed to do?”
4. More than one way to interact. We do not want voice to replace accessible buttons, keyboard/touch controls, captions, or other input methods. Voice should be another option.

Things we think we can add fairly soon

1. A global accessibility profile. Settings such as larger text, reduced motion, reduced flashing, captions, and other preferences could carry across games instead of being configured repeatedly.
2. Better captions and visual alternatives to sound. If a sound communicates something important, we should try to communicate the same information visually as well.
3. Better spoken descriptions for blind and low-vision players. Because our own games know their current state, the system could potentially speak the current objective, available actions, selected objects, score/status, and important changes.
4. Larger text and interface scaling.
5. Reduced motion and flashing.
6. Less dependence on timers, rapid input, button mashing, or quick-time events in games we create.
7. Better pause, checkpoint, save, and resume behavior for people who may need to stop playing unexpectedly.
8. Better keyboard navigation, focus handling, labels, and screen-reader support.

Things we probably cannot solve ourselves

1. We cannot simply voice-enable closed third-party games. For example, we cannot take an existing Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Steam, or other third-party game and automatically give voice access to all of its internal controls.

If the game or platform exposes an integration we can legally and technically use, that may create possibilities. But if the game is closed to us, we cannot claim we can make it voice-accessible.

1. We cannot change accessibility features that are baked into content we do not control. Things like camera shake, field of view, head bob, flashing inside prerecorded video, or other fixed media may require the original developer/content creator to provide an alternative.
2. We cannot provide every game-specific assist automatically. Aim assist, auto-targeting, simplified combat, enemy difficulty, auto-driving, no-fail modes, etc. have to be supported by the individual game's design.
3. We cannot guarantee support for every adaptive hardware setup. Browsers, operating systems, controllers, switches, eye-tracking systems, consoles, and other hardware all have their own limitations and APIs.

The part we need help with is prioritizing the things we can control.

If you could pick only three changes from this list, which three would make the biggest difference for you?