
I want to offer them as close to the equivalent of a sighted experience as I can.”

But the way that I envision things when I’m doing this work is I want to offer players more. I know blind people that play Forza Motorsport 7 using the tremendous amount of steering assist, which Forza 7 does have, and that’s great. “There are those who would disagree with me on that. “From my perspective, Forza was not a blind-accessible game,” says Cole. But according to Cole, who worked on the award-winning accessibility features in Sony’s mega-popular The Last of Us 2, the franchise was simply not meeting the needs of the blind.
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The Forza series (which consists of the arcade-y, open-world driving of Forza Horizon and the hardcore racing simulation of Forza Motorsport) has long offered basic accessibility features, from menu narration for the visually impaired to various assists that help keep less-dexterous drivers on track. Making the most accessible Forza Motorsport yet To get a deeper dive, I spoke to Cole as well as Turn 10 Studios’ gameplay and accessibility producer Neha Chintala and head of Xbox Phil Spencer about bringing these features to life, and why an accessible game is a better game, no matter what kind of player you are. It’s packed with features to let folks with limited eyesight, hearing and mobility still enjoy the game’s ultra-realistic racing action, including a breakthrough Blind Driving Assist mode that could seriously level the playing field for low-vision gamers. None of this would be remarkable, save for the fact that Cole is completely blind.Ĭole, who consults on many top titles, has been working with Turn 10 Studios and Xbox to make what Microsoft is calling the most accessible Forza Motorsport ever. He’s making tight turns, drifting through tricky patches of sand and speeding to the finish line.
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Your CNN account Log in to your CNN accountīrandon Cole picks up a controller, sits down and hops into the new Forza Motorsport game, which is coming to Xbox and Windows later this year.
