Inclusive Fighting with Mind’s Eye: Case Study of a Fighting Game Playing with only Auditory Cues for Sighted and Blind Gamers

Visually impaired people frequently find it difficult to enjoy most of these state-of-the-art games, despite the vast amount of accessibility research on content and interfaces. Meanwhile, a growing number of playable games regardless of visual impairment status have been released. However, there are still few games enabling both blind and sighted players to compete against each other. The Street Fighter 6 (Capcom Co. Ltd.), released in 2023, introduced a sound accessibility feature for the first time in a commercial fighting action game. By clarifying the requirements for sighted and visually impaired players to compete smoothly using this feature, not only can they participate in the game regardless of their disability status, but also new accessible interfaces can be created by using the technology. In this study, the goal is to evaluate the playability of a fighting game with sound accessibility features for visually impaired and sighted groups. This paper reports on the evaluation results of usability and user experience of the sound accessibility features implemented in the Street Fighter 6, for two groups.