Xbox and Turn 10 Studios have given an update today on the highly-anticipated return to the Forza Motorsport series, the aptly-titled Forza Motorsport.
Aside from touting it as the most technically advanced and authentic racing game the studio has produced to date, it’s now being called the most accessible Forza Motorsport ever thanks to some new innovations that Turn 10 has detailed in a blog post.
One of the big-ticket additions is the including of Blind Driving Assists, which is a feature set that’s been developed after years of research and in conjunction with the Gaming & Disability community including Accessibility Consultant and Blind gamer, Brandon Cole.
Blind Driving Assists will use a series of audio cues built into every facet of racing, from letting players know about their position on-track and through turns to giving them detailed feedback about when they should be slowing down or shifting gears. Turn 10 is very clear that these features aren’t relegated to a separate mode that’s dulled down for disabled players but baked into the full experience, and so comes with its own learning curve just like regular racing.
Also coming to Forza Motorsport is One Touch Driving, which is designed to help players with mobility and/or stamina disabilities by allowing them to tweak and enable a series of assists that can take away the need for complex inputs, through things like automatic shifting to enhanced steering, braking assists and new throttle and pit entry assists.
You can see a whole list of accessibility features coming to Forza Motorsport below:
Forza Motorsport Accessibility Features
- Blind Driving Assists: Blind and Low Vision players can use informational audio content during gameplay that will help them navigate tracks, improve their lap times, and complete races. Players will be able to enable each set of cues individually as well as adjust their pitch and volume to best suit their needs.
- One Touch Driving: Players have the option to choose their own combination of enabling braking, steering, and throttle assists to reduce the number of simultaneous inputs required. These driving assists will allow users to customize their driving experience and play with as few or as many assists as they wish.
- Screen Narrator: Players can enable narrator to receive information conveyed through the UI and to help navigate menus. In addition, there will be options for players to customize the narration system, offering new flexibility to choose what information is conveyed.
- Dynamic Audio Description: Players will have in-game cinematics with custom audio descriptions that change based on time of day and weather conditions.
- Text-to-Speech/Speech-to-Text: Players can utilize these options to participate in multiplayer voice chat to send synthesized voice to other players using text-to-speech or view incoming communication from other players in text form, utilizing speech-to-text.
- UI Colorblindness Modes: Players with tritanopia, deuteranopia, or protanopia can change certain colors in the UI theme so that UI information and focus states can be easily distinguished, as desired.
- World Colorblindness Filters: Players with tritanopia, deuteranopia, or protanopia can add a filter to the rendering of 3D objects like tracks, cars, drivers, in-game cinematics, etc. to make color information distinguishable, as desired.
- Controller Remapping: Gameplay controls can be remapped through the settings, offering additional flexibility to a players’ desired control scheme.
- Subtitles: Players can enable subtitles, as well as adjust subtitle font size and subtitle background opacity.
- Audio Customization Settings: Players are able to independently customize the volume of various groups of sounds to create their preferred audio experience.
- Opponent Difficulty: Players can customize opponent driving levels when racing with AI.
- Text Scaling: Players can adjust their menu text to various scaling options. In-game HUD will also have some re-sizing support.
- Contrast: Players can raise the contrast for UI and HUD elements from the default to varying additional tiers, each providing higher contrast ratios to improve readability.
- Moving Backgrounds: Players can disable moving backgrounds, making it easier to read or navigate menus.
