AltSight’s Daily Work — A Blind Game Tester

02 Sep, 2025

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Hello, this is AltSight. I have been completely blind since 2014, and that is why the digital world and modern technologies have become an essential part of my life. At InviOcean, I try not only to write, share, and teach, but also to test, analyze, and promote ideas of inclusivity in all areas of life. I contribute not only my experience but also my inner vision to make InviOcean a place for communication, adaptation, motivation, and inspiration for people with visual impairments. My goal is not just to help people understand technology but to actively use it as a tool for self-development and expression. For those who want to learn more — here is the link to my InviOcean page.

I believe that games can be one of the entry points into the digital world. They teach communication, initiative, and confidence. Through games, you can develop skills, make valuable connections, find a job, and simply feel like part of the world.

I have always been drawn to large-scale multiplayer online worlds where thousands of people create history together: from intense PvP and GvG battles in Lineage II to the vast universe of World of Warcraft with its exciting raids. I have always preferred games where freedom of action and interaction with other players matter more than a strictly scripted storyline.

That is why I was drawn to session-based online projects and online sandboxes — places where every match plays out differently, and the outcome depends not on graphics but on your decisions and teamwork.

And a special place in this lineup belongs to EVE Online. At first, it didn’t capture my interest: the learning curve was too steep, and it was too difficult to figure out. But once I discovered its scale — an entire galaxy with massive battles, mining and construction systems, and a living, realistic economy — I couldn’t help but fall in love with a game where freedom of choice exists and every step can become part of a grand story.

Accessibility of EVE Online: Background and Specific Proposals

Unfortunately, EVE Online is essentially inaccessible to blind players. The gameplay is entirely built around a visual interface and heavily relies on mouse use. Although the game supports hotkey controls, they do not provide full access to the interface. In addition, there is no interface narration through text-to-speech or screen readers. The API is also limited: it only provides data on accounts, corporations, and the economy, but does not allow controlling the ship, engaging in battles, or fully interacting with the game world. For this reason, creating a community-made modification to make EVE Online accessible is currently impossible.

History of Appeals to CCP Games

CCP Games has always been known for listening closely to its community. It is precisely thanks to this close dialogue with players that EVE Online has remained a living universe for many years — mechanics are refined, balance is adjusted, and new features appear, born not in a vacuum but in discussions with capsuleers.

I first raised the topic of EVE Online accessibility back in 2019 by posting a thread on the official forum: Accessibility for People with Disabilities (2019).

Later, in 2023, I returned to this issue: EVE Online Accessibility Support (2023). Both times I received support from the player community, but the issue itself went unnoticed by CCP Games.

In 2025, I raised the topic of EVE Online accessibility once again, and this time the initiative received the strongest response and support. New posts appeared on the official forum and on Reddit:

This time I didn’t stop at just making posts: I sent a separate letter to CCP Games’ technical support with proposals on implementing accessibility. When reaching out to the community, I urged players to discuss the issue, share the posts, and raise the topic on social media. Thanks to these efforts, in 2025 the movement for EVE Online accessibility gained the strongest support yet and became visible to a wider audience.

However, even though the very idea of inclusivity fully aligns with the company’s philosophy — developing the game together with the community — CCP Games has so far shown no interest and has not commented in any way on the accessibility request for visually impaired players.

Exploring Another Path to Address the Accessibility Problem

Since EVE Online still remains inaccessible to blind players, I decided to look for ways that, while not providing full access to the game, would at least partially open up its mechanics. The goal was simple: to gain the ability to perform basic activities — traveling, trading, and building.

OCR Function in NVDA

The first thing I tried was the built-in OCR function in NVDA, especially since it had been mentioned in responses on the EVE Online forum. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition.

To put it simply: OCR technology converts an image with text (a document scan, a photo, a picture, or a screen) into plain text that can be copied and pasted into a document. In the case of NVDA, it has the following advantages:

launched with a single hotkey;
supports multiple languages;
built directly into NVDA, no additional installation required;
allows moving the cursor to the recognized text area, which makes interaction easier.

But there are also drawbacks:

context is lost and the text structure often breaks;
not all text is recognized;
recognition quality is far from perfect, especially in dynamic interfaces like games.

OCR helps to “see” part of the information, but using it for full-scale control in EVE turned out to be practically impossible.

The View Point app

The principle of View Point is simple: the program takes a screenshot, analyzes its contents with a neural network, and makes it accessible for interaction by voicing it through Windows speech synthesis or a screen reader.

The application offers several modes:

UI Mode — recognizes the interface and displays it as a tree of elements, creating a pseudo-interface. Buttons, menus, and lists become available for navigation and activation.
OCR Mode — outputs all the text from the screen into a separate window, where it can be read or copied.
Query Mode — allows you to ask questions about what is shown on the screen (for example, “what is in the center?” or “what buttons are available?”).
PDF Reader — makes even scanned documents and images with text accessible.

In practice, the application does a really good job of structuring the EVE Online interface: each element is clearly marked as a button, a list, a link, and so on. This greatly simplifies perception and navigation.

But there are also nuances:

The most optimal version to use is Gemini 2.5 Flash. It provides the most accurate recognition, but because of the model’s “deep reasoning,” the process takes noticeably more time, and creating a structured pseudo-interface ends up being rather slow.
When activating interface elements, it doesn’t always work on the first try. Sometimes so-called “misclicks” occur. According to the developer, this happens because recognition and activation accuracy directly depend on the AI model’s performance.

In addition, much in EVE Online depends on right-clicking. At the moment, this function is missing in View Point, but I contacted the developer and asked to add right-click emulation. He promised to implement it once he has free time, after which the possibilities for working with the EVE Online interface will expand significantly.

Conclusion

My search showed that full access to EVE Online for blind players does not yet exist. But even today there are tools that allow at least partial interaction with the game.

OCR in NVDA makes it possible to quickly extract text from the screen and hear it through a screen reader. A simple and accessible solution, but limited in interaction, accuracy, and structure.
View Point, based on the Gemini AI model, goes much further. It structures the interface, makes its navigation clear and interactive, and therefore allows simple actions to be performed. Yes, there are still delays, misclicks, and some missing functions, but the direction of development is right.

These solutions do not turn EVE into a fully accessible game, but they show that barriers can be bypassed. Which means the issue is not about impossibility, but about developers being willing to take a step forward.

I hope that in the next few years this problem will be solved — either by the developers themselves or with the help of artificial intelligence technologies, since progress does not stand still and every year new opportunities for digital accessibility emerge.

One should never be afraid to move forward and stay active, because the seeming futility of struggle is not a reason to give up. Sometimes it is precisely the attempts that look useless or imperfect that open new paths and shape the future. We never know which step will turn out to be decisive and what may grow out of it.