UI voice mod for vision impaired

[tanithis]

I know someone that I talked into getting the game for the Xbox one. He is older and has vision problems and it didn't cross my mind that he would have problems reading the screen. I was wondering if there was any mods that read what is on the screen and what is on the pipboy. Thank you.

[montky]

an excellent question!

apologies for the delay - I had to look into this further to see what options might be out there

in the near-term, and mid-term futures.

and I hope you'll request this on the beth forums,

as well as at this-week-in-tech.

this is an excellent area of modding and peripheral potential!

 

apologies for a verbose response,

as it seems there's a lot of options and ways to find a hardware or software solution

 

 

 

A lot will depend on what the budget is,

and whether it is a software or hardware solution path that's taken.

 

Audio-descriptive would be excellent, and is a natural corollary to things like e-books and pod-casts,

so it's a real "What the?!" as to why this is not already a thing somehow.

So, I am positive that, "Murphys law of the internet" would apply here -

"chances are, if you can think of something, someone else somewhen else already has, and it's somewhere on the internet"

 

suffice it to say,

there are some projects in the works for vision-impaired and blind gamers

to FORPG.

its all about customization hehe.

 

having some buffer, that is sent the on-screen .txt for audio descriptive, to then read with an AGIchatbot could work.

such a thing might be a software mode for the game...

that would be some software-themed mod, and perhaps some Nexites might be able to help. that would be PC-Only unfortunately at this time.

 

for something like a 'zoom magnifier on your screen/peripheral' - that's more a third party hardware thing,

that local vision-impaired leagues or tertiary education provider computing society/LAN Party groups

may be able to put your friend in touch with.

much as with the hold-over-to-zoom on apple products etc, some TV's now are built with vision-impair enhance mode,

which allow a similar zoom-over area natively on the TV itself, which I think is a great idea.

 

if your Smart TV that the console visual is patched through has vision-impair mod, enabling that can enable the mouse-over feature to zoom say x8 the selected area. you'll need to have your mouse etc on standby.

some friends of mine use this for Deuteranopia mode - where the game itself does not have software or mod support,

the hardware can 'manual override' to force a deuteranopic-compatible output. the option of last resort, is 'deuteranopic filtered goggles/lenses" to play, however many report this is 'beer goggle' vision at best compared to most other solutions.

 

it is unclear if or how those might function on consoles at this time however.

at least, for a software-side solution...

 

one way might be a screen-share service to an AGI network that way

ie, you send the telemetry to a third party AGI service,

from the visual line out of the tv or other screen capture card etc,

which then uses an AI chatbot to 'read the screen', and relay that back.

it might be an app on your nearby computer,

or a streaming service like Gutenberg or JSTOR etc at some future point.

 

I would also recommend looking into KNOWM and Dr Nugent's ambition to make

memristive reader boards for just such an application as this.

KNOWM has developed several image-read systems which could be cost-effective ways of that happening.

Dr Nugent believes AGI and memristive tech can help make computing and things more accessible,

and is working to make that happen. I can only hope more companies like KNOWM emerge,

and cannot support KNOWM more, especially in their philanthropic outreach.

for things like audio-descriptive, that will need AGI to be cost effective,

and near to real time.

 

I'd then also look into Ben Goertzel or Leon Chua's ambitions similarly in memristive stuff.

they're looking at ways to make things more accessible both in software and hardware in the near future.

 

some of the other approaches though, they just read out loud what writing is on the screen.

that is more, read-writing and being able to read from that in real time.

that's not quite the 'audio-descriptive' envisaged though.

 

some of those, take their cue from

Bohemia's vision impaired framework from ARMA 3.

these use doppler noise scapes, to give an aural sense of distance, movement and player facing

relative to nodes. they are very good, low latency and make vision-impaired people as effective at base defense and area of denial.

this approach is presently also being adapted to place embeddable livestream aural nodes into games

based on similar principles to these kinds of frameworks.

 

-----

on a tangent,

some of the best base-defense and detectives in ARMA and RPGs

are vision-impaired and blind persons.

aural doppler nodes are combined for them to have a clear aural cue environment to discern Friend or Foe,

which developed out of real-world training system needs.

 

such gamers do not fatigue or have delayed response times as other sighted gamers have for comparative repetitive tasks,

and are as-accurate as sited persons in those games and similar role, according to studies from USC and the Microsoft Innovation Center, Sippy Downs.

and so long as they have fun, it's a win-win.

they can also make great turret-sponson gunners, while the game vehicles' onboard electronics system is functioning.

(the turrets lose the Friend-or-Foe doppler system, and some games have 'crybaby' decoys which send false FriendorFoe noise,

causing potential friendly fire hehe)

 

 

 

-----

good luck,

apologies for a verbose response, it took a while to look into it all,

I hope your friend is up and gaming/modding in no time!

and I hope this was of some use in helping them find what works for them, so as they can get gaming.

 

It will probably be some combination of hardware and software that'll get it to work.

I think the best solution and most cost-effective will be, using a computer-enabled monitor or Smart TV in vision-impaired mode

and patching the XBox on that on the ATV/alt channel. or, using split-screen mode in your operating system, and making that work on monitor 2, which has the visual patched in on it...

again, a local computing society, LAN Club, freethinkers club, or vision-impaired league (such as your local Guide Dogs chapter)

may be able to put you in touch with a solution that they know of that's probably better there again hehe.

 

Let us know how they get on, and what solution they wind-up going with,

so as I can take that onboard for my own future praxis

if any locals at LAN Party or the Gaming-Bar might come across this similar kind of question in the future hehe.

[MightyZ0G]

slightly going off on a tangent, does your friend have a surround sound setup for gaming?

I used to have a 7.1 headset, and with that I could easily locate enemies by sound in Skyrim.

on more than one occasion I loosed an arrow at where I heard something and was rewarded with a deer or wolf. never got a rabbit though :(

 

trumpet blowing aside, it makes so much difference to those with good vision, for the vision impaired it could be a real game changer.