Grand Theft Accessibility: A Mod to Make GTA V Blind Friendly

A common question sighted players ask the visually impaired community is, “how do you play videogames if you’re blind?”

Typically, people who play video games never consider how a visually impaired person might play them. Video games are a highly visual medium, rendered in pixels and computer-generated worlds- screen readers can’t see the game, let alone interact with them. However, even though screen readers can’t interact with the game directly, there’s dozens of tricks visually impaired players adopt in order to play games, tricks such as memorizing menu layouts—since most game menus don’t offer menu narration—and taking advantage of a game’s built in soundtrack to maneuver through a world even if the developer didn’t provide audio cues.

All of these tricks are not ideal, though. Players are forced to adopt these tricks because developers either don’t know about video game accessibility for low vision players, or simply don’t see it as something to take seriously, and therefore don’t devote time to making their game more accessible to visually impaired players.

There is a type of game visually impaired players can enjoy though, and that’s audio games. Audio games are exactly what they sound like- games developed for an auditory experience. There are multiple types of audio games, ranging from multi-user dungeons (or MUDS) that output everything as text so screen readers can interpret them, or elaborately voice acted games that require a pair of headphones to fully play. Audio games span many genres including, but not limited to, erotica, action adventure, fantasy, RPG, and even pet simulators.

Even though audio games exist, and are very popular within the community, they’re not mainstream. They’re fringe, and seldom have the backing of a mainstream publisher. Falling Squirrel is the only modern indie developer to have an audio game appear in a mainstream video game store. Their audio-only action-adventure game, The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, will be available for the Xbox One in Q2 2020 or later.

Because mainstream support from video game developers is so rare, it’s common for prominent figures in the visually impaired community to code makeshift solutions themselves. This allows them to play and share popular games with their community- games otherwise inaccessible.

Liam Erven, a totally blind developer of popular audio games such as Super Egg Hunt, Super Liam, and Judgment Day, has developed an accessibility focused mod for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto V, developed by Rockstar Games.

The mod, called Grand Theft Accessibility Mod, allows a visually impaired person or totally blind person to play the game a bit easier. While the mod doesn’t make the game fully accessible to players that are totally blind, the mod does allow visually impaired players to get information output to their screen reader or speech engine of choice.

Visually impaired players can gain location information, get absolute compass headings, and get nearby object and vehicle information as well as nearby pedestrian information all with keyboard commands. Players can also spawn vehicles, teleport to different areas around the game world, receive audible targeting tones for pedestrians and vehicles, receive audible announcements of streets and weapons currently selected, and use basic trainer-like features such as God mode, vehicle God mode, and more.

However, this mod will not read game menus or make the overall UI more accessible,and cannot be used in online multiplayer. At the moment this mod is not able to autopilot vehicles, nor can it spawn bodyguards, but text on the GTA A11y website suggests that future updates may include those abilities and more.

One of the many reasons why this mod is necessary in the first place is because many parts of the game’s UI are not accessible to low vision players. The audible GPS that was in GTA IV was removed so players can’t use it to drive, text is always a very small font and rarely on clearly contrasting surfaces, and in-game tooltips are always in small text at the top left corner of the screen, with no way to pause them or make the text bigger.

This mod is primarily intended for players who are visually impaired, but it’s a demonstration of what’s possible when developing a game with accessibility in mind. While none of these enhancements directly align with the vision guidelines in the game accessibility guidelines website, it does highlight barriers developers can actively try to remove when developing games.

Rockstar did not return a request for comment, nor answered questions about what the studio is doing to improve accessibility in their titles. In certain games, though, they’ve added a number of accessibility features that are just natural design choices. For example, many of their titles offer quick swap buttons, such as Max Payne 3. Red Dead Redemption II has a number of subtitle options, even ensuring that the contrast is high, but there are no captions.

In 2016, Mark Barlet, president and executive director of The AbleGamers Charity, posed a question to Rockstar games- how much would it cost to make Grand Theft Auto V accessible? Rockstar replied, “$128 million.” 

Brandon Coal, a totally blind accessibility advocate and consultant for video game companies, didn’t miss the irony that a blind developer created a mod in his spare time that would make the game somewhat playable and released the mod for free with optional donations.

“I feel that it’s just more proof that accessibility can be achieved in easier ways than some developers believe,” Coal said in an interview. “The funny thing about all this is that Rockstar is, to my knowledge, one of the most stubborn developers when it comes to accessibility. They claimed that making Grand Theft Auto V accessible would cost them something like 128 million dollars. Granted, it would take more than what is present in this mod, but I believe this mod proves that it would be easier than they seem to think.”

According to the game accessibility guidelines basic page, there are a number of things developers can do to make their games easier to play for everyone, such as provide an easily readable default font size, use simple, clear, text formatting, and provide high contrast between text/UI and background. Those design choices don’t benefit just the disabled- sighted players often have trouble seeing tiny tooltips on big screen TV’s, especially if they appear in a far corner of the display out of immediate line of sight. Ensuring a good level of contrast also benefits many other gamers who have situational impairments, such as playing on a mobile device, in direct sunlight, or on a poor-quality display.

The Last Door offered a choice between a standard font and a dyslexia friendly font, and of the people who played through to completion, 14% did so using the dyslexia friendly option, according to the game accessibility guidelines.

The more advanced suggestions offered by the guidelines can make a game more accessible without drastically changing the design afterwards. For example, using distinct sound/music design for all objects and events can make some games almost completely playable by the totally blind. Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Nintendo Switch, has a lot of audio cues that help visually impaired players play the game. Even though there’s no menu narration or screen reader capabilities built into the Nintendo Switch, visually impaired players can maintain an island.  

While the Grand Theft Auto V accessibility mod doesn’t address bigger accessibility problems, like the fact that there’s no menu narration or audible GPS when driving, it can give blind and visually impaired players many tools to aid them in at least playing the game. It acts as a demonstration of what’s possible, and not what isn’t.