‘Gaming’ Archives

Here at Maccessibility, we would sincerely like to thank Steven Melzer, the developer of “domino train”, for adding VoiceOver support in the latest release of his game.  It is important for us to recognize and applaud developers who make the effort to make their apps accessible to those of us who are visually impaired.   [...]

Ananse Productions has just released a new accessible puzzle game for IOS called Stem Stumper. The basic premise of the game is that you are Mimea, a vine who needs fertilizer to grow. You navigate around a garden, avoiding or destroying obstacles and finding and eating the fertilizer. It sounds like a simple enough premise, [...]

Previously, we reported on a collection of chess and checkers games that had recently become accessible with VoiceOver. Now, Shredder, a chess app for iOS devices, has been updated, and among the application’s new features is accessibility support for VoiceOver. The developer notes: Accessibility / Voice Over support for almost everything. Please provide feedback if [...]

iOS developer Marcel Nijman has recently updated his assortment of chess and checkers games for iOS to include VoiceOver support. Besides traditional versions, several variations, such as Chinese Chess, are available as well. With increasing frequency, we are seeing developers implement accessibility in their iOS applications, and the result is a rich platform that blind [...]

Today Apple released iOS 4.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Among the improvements for Voiceover users, come not only a host of important bug fixes, such as proper editing of contact phone numbers, as well as the fact that Voiceover will now read tables in their proper order, but VO users now have very [...]

Today, Apple announced many new products at its annual September media event. Here are some highlights, with emphasis on accessibility. More details regarding access features will likely be forthcoming. The iPod shuffle models have been physically redesigned, but still include VoiceOver navigation of their playlists and content. Buttons have been re-introduced. Pricing begins at $49 [...]

In episode #8 of the Mac-cessibility Round Table Podcast, we introduce our newest contributor, M.J. Phoenix. Our knights of the Round Table Podcast recap and discuss recent Mac-cessibility news stories, including iBooks accessibility, Adobe’s announcement for Flash and Flex accessibility on the Mac, and the recent update to Frotz for iPhone, which provided substantial accessibility [...]

Many visually impaired computer users are familiar with interactive fiction, (also known as adventure games), in which you take on the role of the main character and attempt to make your way through the obstacles, conflicts, and adventures of a given story. Given the text-based nature of this form of entertainment, they have typically been [...]

It’s time for this month’s edition of the Mac-cessibility Round Table Podcast. This month’s episode is #2, entitled "Sedated". Josh de Lioncourt’s sound quality is not quite on par this time, for which we apologize. He was travelling and away from his usual equipment. Topics covered: Introduce this month’s panelists, including Holly Anderson, Darcy Burnard, [...]

The BBC is reporting on a new technology being developed by a team of Japanese researchers which uses focused ultrasonic waves to produce the illusion of solid objects in mid-air to the sense of touch. While still in its infancy, the researchers believe the technique could be used in video games to provide a more [...]

This past week, the first VI-accessible, fully 3D First Person Shooter, Audio Quake, was released for Intel Macs running Leopard. Audio quake is an adaptation of the immensely popular mainstream game, Quake, which was released by ID Software in 1996. One of the things which makes Audio Quake so interesting, is that it uses the [...]

Last week sees another first, as, in addition to the Mac release of Audio Quake, the very first 3D level Description Language (LDL) has also been released through the AGRIP project, for Mac. This add-on for Audio Quake allows a VI player to conceptualize and design their own fully 3 dimensional environments for the game. [...]