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EA shares more accessibility patents
Electronic Arts – the games developer – unveiled its “accessibility patent pledge” in August 2021. Its purpose is to “create a collective” among games developers, to improve accessibility for disabled players. It originally shared 5 patents through the pledge:
- “Contextually Aware Communications Systems in Video Games”
- “Systems and Methods for Automated Image Processing for Images with Similar Luminosities”, which helps address colour vision deficiencies
- “Contrast Ratio Detection and Rendering System”: a system that automatically detects and updates subpart contrast rations
- “Personalised Real-Time Audio Generation Based on User Physiological Response”: technology that plays personalised music based on a user’s hearing issues.
In late 2022 they added 6 more:
- A “machine learning system for improving a player’s experience and performance by automatically recommending and applying (if approved by the player) controller configuration settings based on the player’s specific gameplay style, skill and tendencies”
- “Haptic feedback sequences to communicate to a player both the content displayed on a screen and how to select each item”
- Two patents related to improving voice-controlled features
- Tech providing a virtual joystick “that moves based on the position of the player’s thumb on a touchscreen”
- A smart colour-blindness patent that adjusts gameplay depending on the player’s condition
Finally, EA has open-sourced Fonttik, a tool which “automatically identifies text in video content and determines whether it meets specified size and contrast ratio criteria, making it easier to ensure that the text can be read by players with varying vision conditions.”
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