RNIB and The&Partnership show what it’s like to game with sight loss

The initiative follows on from the success of the “See the Person” perception-changing campaign back in October

By Creative Salon

12 April 2023

Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and The&Partnership have launched a new initiative – Design for Every Gamer – to challenge perceptions and create real change in the world of gaming.

To launch the initiative, RNIB and The&Partnership have joined with sighted and blind and partially sighted gamers on livestreaming platform Twitch. Together, the gamers will play popular video games and have an honest conversation about this very real issue in real-time.

To make this experience as authentic as possible, VFX company, The Mill, has created five different sight loss condition filters, with the help of experts at RNIB. These filters work via cameras and respond to gaze and head tracking. The sighted gamers’ screen is hacked with these filters, so they can experience first-hand the challenges for themselves. They range from partial sight conditions like retinitis pigmentosa, to showing the experience with little to no useful vision, demonstrating the full range of issues.

A study into accessible gaming, conducted in March 2022 by RNIB1, in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London and The University of Edinburgh, found that more than 70 per cent of game developers would like to see sharing on accessibility knowledge and technology within the industry and better resources on accessibility good practice. However, only 15 per cent of game developers reported currently having sufficient understanding of the needs of gamers with sight loss.

With a large, active community of blind and partially sighted gamers, RNIB is uniquely positioned to address this problem. RNIB is launching Design For Every Gamer (DFEG), an initiative to create a better gaming world for people with sight loss and a rallying cry to the industry to start making real change. Through a series of studies and partnerships, RNIB’s mission is to collaborate towards a more inclusive future for gaming.

The project builds on the recent success of ‘See The Person’ , a perception-changing campaign featuring a partially sighted gamer. RNIB and The&Partnership worked on the project to raise awareness of how games can often feel inaccessible for blind or partially sighted players and to encourage people to see the person, not the sight loss.

Sighted, blind and partially sighted Twitch streamers have been recruited to the livestreaming events, by The&Partnership, including BehavingBeardly (who is sighted), SightlessKombat (who is blind) and the lead actor from the ‘See The Person’ campaign, Eli London (who is partially sighted), who is also an avid gamer in their personal life.

‘Design for Every Gamer’ (DFEG) is a rallying cry to the gaming community and the industry to collaborate towards a more inclusive future for gaming. As well as a call to blind and partially sighted gamers to join an exclusive panel at RNIB where they will preview and test upcoming game releases to ensure accessibility is built in during game development, versus an afterthought.

Toby Allen, Executive Creative Director at The&Partnership, said “There’s no better mass-adopted technology than gaming to put sighted people in the shoes of blind and partially sighted people, and no better place to rally the community to action than Twitch.”

Alison Long, RNIB’s Director of Consumer and Business Services, said: “RNIB’s research demonstrates that nearly 7 out of 10 people with sight loss reported it as a challenge when it came to enjoying gaming. Within the industry, there just aren’t enough conversations being had about accessibility and so these Twitch livestreams will be a fantastic way for more people to get involved with building a community to make gaming more inclusive.”

The streams launched on Twitch on Sunday, 9 April at 7pm and Tuesday, 11 April at 8pm and were the first stage as part of RNIB’s larger gaming initiative to help make video games accessible for blind and partially sighted people.