JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Video game companies want their games to be fun for as many people as possible, and that includes players with disabilities who might face challenges when they play video games. Game company Electronic Arts recently made public more than 25 tools and patents as part of their ongoing patent pledge. This includes things like options that let players better customize their controls or that make colors easier to see on the screen.
For gamers like Steve Saylor, who is legally blind, these are important features in a video game. He's a content creator and a video game accessibility consultant. He's worked on games like Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 and The Last Of Us series. And he's here now to tell us more about how he plays video games and to take stock of how the industry is doing when it comes to making these options more available. Hey there, Steve.
STEVE SAYLOR: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So I want to start with this question. I know that you love video games, and as we mentioned, you're also legally blind. And I think for some people who hear this conversation, that might seem surprising. I'd love if you could just start by telling us your story.
SAYLOR: Yeah. So I grew up in the '80s at the beginning of the Nintendo generation. And I used to think, actually, I sucked at video games because I had to sit so close to the TV in order for me to be able to see. But then, as I grew older, gaming kind of became less and less a part of my life. I realized that, over time, it was kind of more fun to just kind of watch me fail at video games than it was for me to do well. And so I started a YouTube series called Blind Gamer, where I would just play games, and I would sort of laugh at how bad I was.
It wasn't until a couple years later where I realized that it wasn't that I sucked at games. It was that games sucked for me. And I realized that accessibility was something that was needed in video games in order for kids like myself growing up to be able to play games and not let their disability get in the way.
SUMMERS: What kind of options in video games make it easier for you to be able to play and enjoy them?
SAYLOR: Well, oftentimes, whenever you talk about accessibility, there definitely are options that are great for players like myself - stuff like a screen reader or larger text size or a high-contrast mode, which actually kind of changes the character models or things you're interacting with. It adds a shade of color to them so that makes it a little bit easier to spot. But oftentimes, accessibility is also part of the game design. So anything that's designed where there's an audio element added in instead of just necessarily turning on an option to enable that - that's something that I personally look into when I'm playing games.
SUMMERS: I mean, you've been doing this work for a long time, so I'm curious how challenging it was for you at the beginning of your work in video game accessibility to get these companies to prioritize making games more accessible to everyone.
SAYLOR: At first, it was - kind of felt like we were in an underground movement where - a lot of the developers I would talk to was mostly trying to be able to convince higher-ups about the importance of accessibility, not to say that they were sort of arrogant and they didn't care about accessibility. It's just they were ignorant. They just didn't realize how important it was. So oftentimes, I was - like, us, myself and other consultants, were basically brought in to kind of encourage developers and encourage more executives to be like, hey. We, as disabled players, exist. It was a struggle at first. And, again, we still have a long way to go, but we've made a lot of improvement just within the past few years.
SUMMERS: Listening to you, you sound at least somewhat optimistic about the future of video games when it comes to making them more available to more players. Is that true?
SAYLOR: Yes. I generally am a positive person, so I like to be able to think of myself as sort of thinking about it positively. But I also have to mention that the industry right now within video games is kind of a bit in flux. Unfortunately, within the past two years, we've seen record number amount of layoffs from a studio side. A lot of those accessibility champions that we've had in studios are getting laid off, and they're having trouble trying to - the ability to find work when there's so many people looking for work. And there's very few positions available because of recession and coming off of the pandemic. There's not enough money to kind of go around.
So sometimes our conversations or our voices can be lost in the mix. And with even efforts of potentially, like, DEI initiatives being either put to the side or not as focused on as they used to be - accessibility is a part of that. And we may see that sort of effort be kind of diminished. But it's always going to be a period of time where it's in flux, but it means that at some point in the future, things will get better. We need that right now more than ever.
SUMMERS: That's Steve Saylor, blind gamer and accessibility consultant. Steve, thank you.
SAYLOR: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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