A 3D-Auditory virtual environment to analyse the accessibility of the medium for sighted and visually impaired audiences.
Supervisor: Dr. John Shearer
As the number of players suffering from visual impairments increases due to the expanding games market, there is a need for efficient sensory substitution mechanics that can facilitate a rich mental depiction of the virtual environment. The use of the auditory sense has proven to be an effective approach towards creating a method of interaction for players, and this project proposes a recontextualization of this technique for a multiplayer setting. The reasoning behind this is because of the growing market trends towards multiplayer only games.
In this project implementation, two players are paired against each-other and must process and decode audio information relating to their character position within an environment and convert it into a spatial mentation representation, with the goal of being able to outmaneuver and beat their opponent using traditional first-person shooter gameplay. Results show that a majority of participants found that relying exclusively on the perception of 3D audio cues to be an accessible form of game design, with several players noting the enjoyment of the experience regardless of their visual impairment. This highlights the achievements of the project, with further testing and development being an appropriate measure to ensure the validity of results before inferring to the wider game development community.