The new Forza Motorsport will have accessibility options for people who are blind or have low vision. The American developers Turn 10 Studios, in charge of the new Microsoft racing title, have worked for more than two years on the creation of these help systems called Blind Driving Assists (BDA), which could be translated into Spanish as "driving assistance for blind people.
Turn 10 Studios has worked with consultant Brandon Cole, a blind gamer who specializes in helping development studios create accessibility technologies. In addition, the company has also had the support of other players with vision and mobility problems.
Brandon Cole, in statements to La Vanguardia, assures that "I started working on BDA technology in March 2021. The interesting thing about looking back is that it all started with a talk about accessibility I gave to various Xbox developers." On the other hand, the person in charge of gameplay and accessibility of Forza Motorsport, Neha Chintala, comments that in Turn 10 Studios they have worked in collaboration with other developers from Xbox Game Studios. “We call it the Gaming For Everyone team,” she explains.
Blind Driving Assists technology works as a set of options and is not a specific game mode. Players can choose different types of hearing aids ranging from specific sounds to know when a curve is coming to a voice that reads the text on the screen or tells you how fast the car is going.
“Blind Driving Assists technology works through information, which is what we blind players lack,” explains Cole, adding that “we solved this problem by finding ways to provide this information to players in a way that is easy to understand and to follow: it's like giving someone a clue as to what they should be reacting to”. It is better understood with an example: if a sharp curve is coming, the player will hear the audible indicator that warns of a sharp curve.
Forza Motorsport has always been a very configurable and customizable driving game and this is maintained in the accessibility options. The BDA is not activated or completely deactivated, each option can be configured to adapt it to the needs of each player.
This new technology makes Forza Motorsport playable for blind people, but as Brandon Cole warns, it takes a process of adapting and learning to fully master it. In the configuration menu you can listen to the different sounds and help to know what each thing means, but this is only the first step. Practice is required to master the game and to find exactly what the best configuration is for each case.
Beyond the BDA, the new Forza Motorsport has many other accessibility options. To begin with, the difficulty is fully customizable: you can activate and deactivate the braking assistants, the automatic gear change, the level of simulation of the physics and the damage to the vehicle, among many other measures.
In addition, the game supports Microsoft's Adaptive Controller and all buttons can be configured. Some people may have difficulty pressing more than one button at a time or moving both joysticks simultaneously. To help them, the control systems are fully customizable and many mechanics can be automated. This is known as One Touch Driving.
In addition, Forza Motorsport also has a screen narration system and text-to-speech (and vice versa) to help the correct navigation through the menus. Finally, you can also configure the color filters to facilitate the experience for people with color blindness.
Beyond Microsoft's driving simulator, BDA technology could also be used in other video games of other genres. “For me, the hope is that other developers and studios take note of what we are doing with Forza Motorsport and try to use our work to apply these technologies in other scenarios. For example, in a big open world game,” says Brandon Cole.
Along the same lines, Neha Chintala comments that "I hope to inspire other developers to make an effort to create more accessible games." In addition, he adds that "I believe in the spirit of this challenge with which we intended to make Forza more accessible to date, I hope that the industry in general also takes these types of challenges to make all games more accessible."
The new Forza Motorsport will arrive during this 2023 exclusively on Xbox Series X | S and PC. It will be available from the day of launch in the Microsoft Game Pass.
