An Open Letter: Please Improve Screen Reader Support of the Unity Editor and Engine

Dear Unity:

I would like to ask that Unity improve the screen reader support in the Unity editor and engine. I am a game developer and would like to use Unity to develop games for multiple platforms. I have years of industry experience and an currently pursuing my own independent development, with a focus on blind accessibility. However, I lost my vision a few years ago, so I rely on screen readers to interact with my computer. I am an engineer and fortunately Visual Studio is completely accessible using a screen reader.

I had previously used Unity 5.6, while I still had my sight. After losing it, I periodically checked releases of the Unity editor over the past few years. All of them had very limited screen reader support. Not enough for it to be a suitable engine for my development efforts. The Unity Hub became pretty usable after I switched to the beta of version 3. I can install editor versions and create new projects but that is about as far as I can get. The editor menu bar is navigable, and I can use the keyboard to jump to various panels, but those panels are not visible to the screen reader.

There are a few fixes that would go a long way to allowing me to use the editor, at least at a basic level and from an engineer's perspective. First, I need to be able to select and interact with objects in the Hierarchy panel. Currently, the screen reader does not see anything here. This would allow me to find and manipulate objects in the scene. Second, I need to be able to view and edit properties in the Inspector panel. This would allow me to build prototypes or work with an existing project. It would also allow me to do some basic scene layout using the position component of an object. I am hoping to be able to build test scenes for the primary task of scripting I would be doing. Third, I would need to be able to browse the script files. It has been a while since I used the editor, and from what I remember, I can use Visual Studio as the editor. If there is an existing project created, that can be used directly and all should be good on that front. Finally, dialogs like settings and build options need to work with the screen reader so I can configure and build my projects.

I really only use the keyboard, the mouse is not a great experience for me. It is too noisy when I enable the mouse mode of the screen reader as it reads what is under the mouse as it moves. Plus I don't get feedback on where I am on the screen, since I can't see the mouse cursor at all. So everything should have a way to access it through the keyboard. Menus, keyboard shortcuts, and supporting the context key for context menus (usually hadnled with a right-click) are key to allowing me to use the editor. Plus, other power users may want the additional keyboard support to improve workflow.

The other major aspect of the engine that would benefit me, both as a developer and as a player, is screen reader support for the UI elements provided by the Unity UI library. As a player, when inquiring about screen reader support for other developer's games, many have stated the lack of first-party support as a reason they don't include it. As a developer. it would be great if there was support out of the box for screen readers, either pulling from existing text in the UI or allowing text to be specified for visual elements. Similar to how the Alt Text works for images in HTML. As the engine's developers, you are the right people to support this, giving your developers an easy way to support blind accessibility in their games. And as a blind player, it would be wonderful for the many Unity games to just simply work with screen readers.

Thank you for reading and I hope that Unity can become a better engine as a result of these improvements.

A blind gamer and developer

 

*bump*
I am a totally blind developer. I was interested in building a game and learning Unity. I installed the hub, and this works great with a screen reader; I can install, view projects, etc. Once I installed the editor all of this failed. I can navigate to panels as the prior post mentioned, but I cannot view any of their contents. Because the Unity editor locks you into using the editor there are no other options for me, and I don't believe I can use Unity at all. While I know there has been work on the UI components, frontend isn't the only thing that matters, and there are blind developers out here.
Thanks,

 

I just wanted to add my voice to the calls above. Professional dev for many years, considering using game engines to actually make games at a reasonable level in a workable timeframe, but all of my research tells me this is likely to fail because the Unity tooling is inaccessible to screenreader users. Please put some effort into addressing these issues so I can get creative and see what power an engine can bring to my game making experience.