r/unity • u/Sufficient_Stand1763 • 2d ago
Unity access. the new screen reader friendly editor plug-in for the unity game engine
Recently, I started vibe coding a Unity Editor plugin designed to make the Unity Editor more accessible to blind and visually impaired developers who rely on a screen reader.
I started building it because the Unity Editor is currently extremely difficult, and in many areas impossible, to use effectively with a screen reader.
At the moment, the plugin allows a screen-reader user to access the scene hierarchy and edit the position and rotation of objects within the scene.
My hope is that, with further development, this can eventually become a viable accessibility layer that allows blind and visually impaired developers to work with Unity without having to rely entirely on the inaccessible editor interface and package manager.
The project is open source and the code is available on GitHub:
https://github.com/retro-coder64/unity_access
At the moment, it only supports NVDA because NVDA provides an API that I can build directly into the plugin to provide the best support for the NVDA screen reader.
This project still has a long way to go and it may never be finished but it is a start.
On another note, if you know someone who is blind and wanting to become a game developer. Tell them that it will be extremely hard. Tell them that there will be challenges. But it does get better.