Accessibility in Civ VII

[ConquestCola]

Does anyone know the accessibility situation for Civ VII? I know for a fact that there are a lot of visually impaired gamers who would love to be able to play a Civ game, but historically the franchise has been pretty much off limits. I know it would be incredibly difficult to successfully implement accessibility features in any 4X game, but it would be extremely impressive if the dev team could pull something like that off. Any news or even rumors would be great.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

AFAIK, the only in-game accessibility option in Civ6 was for colorblindness. I would assume that will return. Having said that, hopefully it be touched on during the upcoming showcase on the 20th. Barring that, we've also inquired from @FXS_Sar .

 

[Opera at Sea]

I hope it will come in a form (but not limited to) deeper UI customization options; which is an accessibility option in itself for a lot of people. Even if it's not always perceived as such. Changing the UI to be less 'noisy' or actually increase visibility for certain things. Possibly a lot of players will say "I just like it better that way" but it might be a huge thing for people that struggle with attention deficiency or sensory overload or other of such issues. And sometimes someone might not even be aware if they're the former or the latter.

 

[Leyrann]

Does anyone know the accessibility situation for Civ VII? I know for a fact that there are a lot of visually impaired gamers who would love to be able to play a Civ game, but historically the franchise has been pretty much off limits. I know it would be incredibly difficult to successfully implement accessibility features in any 4X game, but it would be extremely impressive if the dev team could pull something like that off. Any news or even rumors would be great.

What would these features be?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

What would these features be?

It really would be interesting to hear from some input from a visually impaired person on what kind of accessibility interface features would be helpful. My initial impression is that they would benefit from an audio descriptive supplement that would read out what's being visually presented, however that would be extremely complex, as Civ is a game with a lot of visual information density.

 

[pokiehl]

It really would be interesting to hear from some input from a visually impaired person on what kind of accessibility interface features would be helpful. My initial impression is that they would benefit from an audio descriptive supplement that would read out what's being visually presented, however that would be extremely complex, as Civ is a game with a lot of visual information density.

To date there’s one big example of a AAA game being considered fully accessible for people with visual impairments: The Last of Us Part 2.

The Last of Us Part II - Accessibility

www.playstation.com

This game was heavily praised for being so forward-thinking and thoughtful with accessibility options. There’s even a visual impairment preset.

Some of the key options are text-to-speech for everything in the game, high-contrast, large HUD, auto-aim, voiced navigation assistance, skip puzzles, etc.

Obviously a third-person action game like TLOU is quite different from Civ, but this should give you an idea of the considerations.

 

[Opera at Sea]

I think the latest Forza game also got some accolades for having a lot of these options. But yeah, TLoU2 is pretty much the holy grail. Audio description/menu narration and high contrast and larger fonts seem like things that Civ could implement and be very helpful. Perhaps also more ways to jump to places on the map without needing to manually scroll (like e.g. cycling through opponent capitals) - and perhaps a log of opponent movements that can be re-read or narrated, in case a player finds it hard to follow the quick sequence of animations during the opponents turn.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Possibly a lot of players will say "I just like it better that way" but it might be a huge thing for people that struggle with attention deficiency or sensory overload or other of such issues.

Ah, that sounds like my experience with Civ6. (not 5) Everything is so much cluttered in pieces all over a game that it becomes ridiculous to me.
I was going to create a topic as such :
To prevent my attention to be burst in every ways puzzled fashion :
- No era dedications
- A friendly map generator and friendly settling rules that makes settling more obvious instead of bad or worse
- Buildings that have more signification and interact more with resources (Civ5 granary and other buildings)
- No loyalty pressure
- No dark ages
- No quests for boosts
- No districts ? What a potentially horrible idea
- No overcomplicated uniques (or no uniques)

But to be frank, I don't know if I suffer from an impairy or else, but when I see "accessibility" somewhere, I don't think about recognized handicap but my very own feeling. Games can be hard or challenging, but I don't want to feel overwhelmed by AI advantages or feel to play sub-optimally for example, that you can do nothing or too little against. (example : not having any euréka or inspiration for any upcoming tech or civic, not having any golden age - especially by 1 or 2 points -, etc.)

So I'm all for "accessibility", especially the "soft way".

 

[Opera at Sea]

But to be frank, I don't know if I suffer from an impairy or else, but when I see "accessibility" somewhere, I don't think about recognized handicap but my very own feeling.

That's a common feeling Folks with things like adhd or autism will often remark that they struggle with sensory overload or find it hard to keep an overview in a 'busy' space. But sometimes it's just something that someone experiences without it being a neurological thing. In any case I think it will benefit a lot of players to offer ways to tweak the UI and other mechanics to minimize visual or auditory clutter.

Or the opposite: it might be useful to be able make custom notifications for things that a lot of people don't need but others will often forget. E..g. the thumbtacks in Civ 6 were a very nice tool.

 

[ConquestCola]

Just giving this thread a bump, hoping it won't be missed in all the noise about reactions to the game reveal. There's a lot about 7 that simply isn't going to change at this point, but maybe it's not too late to include some accessibility support for legally blind and totally blind gamers. It would mean the world to a lot of avid gamers, not to mention being a good bit of PR for the game. At the very least, I hope an accessibility mod would be possible, but it will take some special forethought into modding capability to make it that way. There's a lot of stuff that the average mod just wouldn't cover, like the innate ability to navigate the map, etc. But maybe a table of distances to nearby units and cities with the ability to plot paths to them, easily programmable waypoints (far more than just 0-9, hopefully with a separate menu with custom labels, etc.), and other things might work. Maybe reaching out to some blind gamers to implement stuff to successfully navigate the map might help. Beyond that, making sure the UI is usable with a screen reader. These are bare minimum things, that would take some patience and dedication, but I know for a fact that there are a lot of gamers who would absolutely love to play any version of Civ, but just haven't had the ability up to this point.

 

[ianhamilt0n]

Does anyone know the accessibility situation for Civ VII? I know for a fact that there are a lot of visually impaired gamers who would love to be able to play a Civ game, but historically the franchise has been pretty much off limits. I know it would be incredibly difficult to successfully implement accessibility features in any 4X game, but it would be extremely impressive if the dev team could pull something like that off. Any news or even rumors would be great.

The Xbox store listing temporarily a bunch of accessibility tags associated with it, though I'm not entirely convinced that all of the tags have been correctly applied. It gives a clue at least of some of the things that might be in there, and it's clear at least that accessibility is a greater consideration in this game than previous ones in the series.

It covered things like text scaling, text <-> voice chat transcription, menu narration, stuff like that.