We at MeinMMO spoke with a legally blind gamer who enjoys playing Final Fantasy XIV in her free time. Here is what she shared with us about her experiences with gaming and the MMORPG.
If you are active in the gaming community every day, browsing countless forums and discussions, you will encounter a variety of players. Some time ago, I came across a video in the subreddit for Final Fantasy XIV (via reddit), where a player explained how she navigates the MMORPG as a blind person.
I reached out to her and had a conversation about her experiences as a blind player in FFXIV and gaming in general. The article also includes some of her comments from reddit and the YouTube video.
This is Sara: “Hello everyone! I am Sara Winters. I am a programmer (but not for games!) and besides video games, I also enjoy cosplay, cooking, and knitting.”
Sara told me in our conversation that she is classified as “legally blind.” This means that her visual ability is so severely impaired that glasses or other visual aids cannot compensate for it.
However, legal blindness does not necessarily mean that the person can see nothing at all. Sara explained to me in our conversation how it affects her:
“Yes, I can recognize shapes and can also read when the text is really large. I use a special monitor for work. […] I am also not colorblind; I can distinguish between red and green, orange and blue, or yellow and purple. But the colors appear differently to me than to other people. I see them more as ‘saturated shadows.’ This means that sometimes I perceive shadows with similar colors like red and orange as the same color.”
– Based on a standard for visual acuity of 1.0 (100%), a person is considered visually impaired if, despite correction with glasses or contact lenses, they achieve at most 0.30 but more than 0.05 in the better eye.
– If the visual acuity in the better eye is between 0.05 and 0.02, it is referred to as severe visual impairment.
– With a visual acuity of less than 0.02, which practically only allows for light/dark perception, or if the visual field is less than 5 degrees, a person is considered blind under the law (via. Federal Association of Ophthalmologists)
Corona drives gamers into online worlds
This is how Sara got into FFXIV: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many multiplayer games and MMORPGs have seen a growth spike, as people can socialize in them. For Sara, Corona was the reason to search online for new opportunities to meet people.
“I started [with FFXIV] last year. COVID (sic.) has made other forms of social contact very, very difficult, and I am really glad to be here in Eorzea. […]”
Even though she hasn’t finished the main story of FFXIV yet, currently playing through the Stormblood expansion, Sara enjoys her time in the game. She finds her way around the MMORPG mostly through sounds, which is an area where FFXIV excels.
This ranges from simple footstep sounds indicating that the group has started moving, to the drawing of weapons for attack, to what type of pet has just been summoned. The audio warning for enemy attacks also helps her navigate safely through the game. In her video, she lists the particularly important audio cues:
This is how Sara plays in groups: MMORPGs are characterized, among other things, by the fact that you play them with many other people. For example, there are a whole series of dungeons in FFXIV that are mandatory. You have to complete them to progress in the MMORPG.
Sara attempts to complete dungeons with her friends. However, she often also plays in random groups:
“When I tank, I send an automatic message in the chat letting people know that I am blind. I am confident enough not to do this with healers and DPS. […] Melee classes are definitely the hardest role for me because of positioning. I can hear the attacks and movements of the bosses, but I can’t always tell which direction they are facing. Healing, ranged combat, magic, and tanking do not require me to pay attention to positioning.”
It is not uncommon to receive toxic comments and insults in online games. Even though the FFXIV community may seem very tame compared to many others, there are still unfriendly players there. I asked Sara how her experiences in random groups in FFXIV have been so far.
“I had a very small number of bad encounters, but it had nothing to do with my being blind. People in FFXIV are usually very nice, which is surprising given everything I hear about online gaming. […] I try to play new dungeons that I have never done before with friends who can see. They guide me through the instance in voice chat before I tackle them with random groups.”
In dungeons, Sara also uses a “text-to-speech” tool to communicate with her group members. It works well, except in large instances like the PvP Rival Wings, where it receives far too many inputs from players and fails to participate anymore.
Gaming as a Help for Blindness
One of the questions I was curious about was how Sara came to gaming at all. After all, it is a visual medium where you often have to pay close attention to what is happening on the screen. Sara explained to me that it was actually her eye doctor who introduced her to this hobby:
“My eye doctor recommended it to improve my hand-eye coordination. My earliest games were Pokémon, Tetris, and so on. I eventually bought a PS2 and became a big fan of RPGs and strategy games, including Final Fantasy.”
Games that she enjoys playing often lack special features for blind players, Sara told me. It is often challenging for her. Helpful are turn-based combat systems in RPGs or games that allow quick pausing to assess the situation.
In games that focus more on action, Sara finds good sound design and controller vibration very helpful. To play, she uses the Steam controller, which facilitates gameplay with its haptic feedback.
Headphones are also a must. As Sara explained in her video, especially surround sound helps to orient herself in the game and quickly understand what is happening. Through sounds, for example, you know
- which abilities are being used,
- what terrain you are on,
- from which direction attacks are coming (shooter players will likely relate to this).
Good sound design is therefore extremely helpful, and the news that the PS5 version of FFXIV now also supports surround sound has delighted Sara. Her plea to the developers is therefore:
“Please provide more sound cues!”
I sincerely thank Sara for the interesting conversation. Perhaps we will run into each other in FFXIV in the future. After all, with the new expansion Endwalker, a feature is coming that allows players to travel between data centers.
Final Fantasy XIV announces new expansion Endwalker – What we already know
