Hello,
I have a few ideas to improve the accessibility of games for blind individuals using RetroArch.
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It would be helpful, during the installation of RetroArch, to have a checkbox to enable accessibility mode. This way, upon the first launch of RetroArch, there would be a vocal feedback.
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I noticed an issue in RetroArch. When we want to assign a key for the AI service and choose a key that is already in use,
there is no vocal feedback, and we get stuck as nothing is spoken. It’s necessary to close RetroArch and restart it.
Also, on an “azerty” keyboard, I still don’t know which key to use, as all keys are taken. It would be good that if we check an accessibility box, the service_ia mode is automatically activated, and a shortcut is defined automatically.
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Improve OCR. With RetroArch, we have to use a key to use OCR, but this could be done automatically.
There is an NVDA addon that does this, and even the latest versions of NVDA do it.
OCR is triggered regularly, according to a duration that can be defined.
For example, 0.5 seconds, 2 seconds… It is also possible to define a part of the screen to scan.
It’s very convenient to get the desired information and not necessarily everything on the game screen.
What I fear is that in games using the GPU, there may be some stuttering with automatic OCR.
It might be possible, for some computers that have a graphics chipset and a dedicated graphics card, to instruct the OCR to use the graphics chipset, while the emulator uses the graphics card. The work would be distributed,
and the game would remain smooth.
It would be good, in the case where we define a part of the screen for OCR scanning, to have profiles for each game that can be saved.
For example, for Zelda, I would like to scan my screen with these coordinates: x200 x500 y150 y300.
We would have our quadrilateral.
Well, it could be saved and associated with the Zelda game.
Thus, at the next launch of the Zelda game, the profile could be automatically activated for Zelda.
OCR profiles could be shared among players.
However, it will be necessary for the resolution of the one who created the profile to be recorded,
and if the resolution of the new user is different, there should be an automatic conversion of the X X Y Y coordinates.
There is also a utility for NVDA that does this with Golden Cursor, so it’s something that can be done.
With these improvements, it will be a true revolution in accessible retro gaming.
Thank you for sharing my post with those developing the accessibility of RetroArch.
