Have you guys heard the latest rumor about Pokémon GO? We’re finally making strides toward inclusivity in our favorite game! Like can you imagine how wild it is that Niantic is A/B testing screen reader prompts?
If you dive into the ‘Accessibility’ menu in settings, there’s now a shiny new option to toggle on/off ‘Screen Reader’. Oh, and get this, there’s even an option for Speech Rate! How cool is that? For those who might not know, a screen reader helps blind or partially sighted people navigate apps by turning visual info into speech or braille. So essential!
The exciting part? Not everyone has access to it yet! Some trainers with Android devices using app version 0.343.0 are getting to test out these features while others are left waiting. I mean, talk about FOMO!
This is progress, but let’s be honest, it’s just the beginning! We’ve talked about accessibility issues before in GO. Trainers have reported challenges like missing shiny Pokémon because they didn’t get the shiny mark on their name due to color blindness. While they fixed that particular issue (thank goodness), there are still plenty of hurdles for players with visual disabilities.
The famous American Foundation for the Blind previously wrote about ways Pokémon GO could improve. This was back in 2016! It’s taken way too long for meaningful changes to happen since then. But hey, at least we’re seeing some movement now, with this A/B test being one of the most significant updates since launch!
The struggle lies in how Pokémon GO is built on Unity, an engine that doesn’t support many accessibility features built into Apple or Android devices, such as VoiceOver protocols from Apple. What gives?! I’m hoping this testing proves just how necessary a full-fledged screen reader feature will be for GO. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it expanded beyond just menus? Imagine having helpful voice prompts when catching Pokémon or navigating all those ever-changing menus, it would make such a difference!
