Stories of Blossom developer talks about the importance of audio descriptions and how they have been implemented into the game for accessibility.
Soft Leaf Studios developer, Conor Bradley shared a video on Twitter for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) about the upcoming indie title Stories of Blossom. The short but detailed video shows examples of how the game uses audio descriptions, why they are important, and how the community has helped shape the game.
The video shows the game playing out with a narration detailing the key information that is being presented on-screen, and done so in a story-reading style. One example finds an entire scene being described, from the tone of the scene, the characters, and the key background details such as “Cumble Village”.
Bradley explained, “Early on in development we identified potential barriers that were present in our game. We soon found there would be a lot of information that blind players would be missing out on.” Looking at how other media deals with audio descriptions, he said that the studio took that knowledge to “write lines for each area that was lacking in detail.”
The studio had gamers from the disabled community test the game and their feedback is said to continue in shaping the game. “We don’t know where we would be without them.” He added.
Stories of Blossom is a point-and-click title rich in story about the protagonist Clara, who brings a series of short tales to life as her grandfather tells the stories. Players are able to explore storybook-style illustrations as they come across numerous characters and challenges to solve.
The game already has some interesting features that we can see from the video, such as outlines and labels for interactive elements, subtitles with background boxes, text outlines, and a clear speaker label. In addition to that, the Steam page for Stories of Blossom notes that there’s a full list of accessibility features available on Taming Gaming’s Family Gaming Database.
