Accessibility Suggestions

[TonyTricicolo]

+1 Full controller support.

I'm not disabled but I do have education in exercise science. Prolonged sitting and typing on a keyboard creates kyphosis which is an arched upper back and forward neck lean. The posture also weakens the lower back due to the amount of time under tension in the sciatic area. It's not a perfect solution but playing with a controller allows the person to sit more upright and helps alleviate some of the long term problems of sedentary positions.

[SteveTheCynic]

10 hours ago, LadyAdmiral said:

No adjustable cursor size or color in-game for low-vision gamers

Workaround for size : Use the Accessibility settings (Win+U on Windows 11, YMMV on Windows 10, but it's in the new Settings app anyway) to change the size of the *Windows* cursor - SWTOR takes immediate account of the change and adjusts its cursor accordingly.  I use this routinely when playing railshooter missions because the aiming crosshair is way far too small on a UHD screen.

[LadyAdmiral]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Workaround for size : Use the Accessibility settings (Win+U on Windows 11, YMMV on Windows 10, but it's in the new Settings app anyway) to change the size of the *Windows* cursor - SWTOR takes immediate account of the change and adjusts its cursor accordingly.  I use this routinely when playing railshooter missions because the aiming crosshair is way far too small on a UHD screen.

Yes!! I saw this good tip come up earlier and thought it was great. Downside is its not independent so you can't have a bigger cursor "just" for SWTOR.

[Brilladrienf]

They continue to slowly butcher the UI, first the inventory and character sheet and now the buttons on the map and a giant bar at the top right that makes me have to click like 4 more times to get to where I want to go. The old way worked just fine people please change it back.

[tomtiki]

Bring back the light and dark system with more armor sets/cosmetics tied to it 

[Nisime]

On 12/6/2022 at 5:17 AM, TonyTricicolo said:

+1 Full controller support.

I'm not disabled but I do have education in exercise science. Prolonged sitting and typing on a keyboard creates kyphosis which is an arched upper back and forward neck lean. The posture also weakens the lower back due to the amount of time under tension in the sciatic area. It's not a perfect solution but playing with a controller allows the person to sit more upright and helps alleviate some of the long term problems of sedentary positions.

Yes, this would be a good option. I am disabled and sitting in a computer chair for a long period of time makes my condition worse (and I can't use a standing desk either). I already have to spend a lot of time at the computer for school work. It would be nice to have accessibility options for SWTOR that made it more playable. This is a good one.

Also, making the story mode flashpoints easier/shorter would be really helpful. I play for the story. If I wanted a harder mode I would choose to play Veteran or Master. I wish some of the flashpoints were broken down into smaller separate flashpoints so they could be done in multiple sessions. That would reduce the amount of time spent sitting too long.

 

 

[lightningseven]

On 1/3/2023 at 11:40 PM, Nisime said:

Yes, this would be a good option. I am disabled and sitting in a computer chair for a long period of time makes my condition worse (and I can't use a standing desk either). I already have to spend a lot of time at the computer for school work. It would be nice to have accessibility options for SWTOR that made it more playable. This is a good one.

Also, making the story mode flashpoints easier/shorter would be really helpful. I play for the story. If I wanted a harder mode I would choose to play Veteran or Master. I wish some of the flashpoints were broken down into smaller separate flashpoints so they could be done in multiple sessions. That would reduce the amount of time spent sitting too long.

 

 

i am disabled too and because of my condition (Lymphedema) i am not able to sit up longer than 5-8 hours of the time ON SPECIAL days.  ON MOST days i am prone, in bed, all day, every day, and this has been my way for about 13 years now.   When i play SWTOR it is always IN BED with my keyboard and mouse right there.   I do not think using a controller is even close to optimal given all the abilities and powers one must use, 1 of those buttons must act as a shift key.

Have you ever tried putting your computer (i have a tall tower "desktop" PC) next to your bed and your monitor there (or on a wall, low enough) so that you can play from bed?  that is the only way i play and it is the only way that i CAN play, due to my own disability of lymphedema (i also have open leg wounds on my leg and i need to keep my lymph swelling down in order to try to heal them).

 

[Nisime]

The bright, flashing lights seem worse than usual to me lately. I really wish there was a way to turn off flashing lights.

But some of the long-time ones are really bothersome. For example, the ones on the stage on the Promenade on Nar Shaddaa. It's really frustrating to try to participate in Life Day events while avoiding those bright flashing lights.

I finally bought the Umbaran Train Stronghold and found I can't use it due to the bright white, swinging lights. Instant migraine trigger. Maybe a light switch like the apartment on Rishi has? I also wish the train  didn't have those lights for decorating purposes, but it would at least eliminate a migraine trigger if I could just turn them off. 

[AurelianusImpero]

Hello everyone and Happy New Year 2023!
I would like to make a suggestion.
Would it be possible to reintroduce Kira Carsen's costumization 10?
Personally, I've been desperately looking for this item for 1 month and I can't get it. Would it be possible to put it on sale at the cartel bazaar like Raina Temple's customization 9?

Edited February 1, 2023 by AurelianusImpero

[SteveTheCynic]

8 hours ago, AurelianusImpero said:

Hello everyone and Happy New Year 2023!
I would like to make a suggestion.
Would it be possible to reintroduce Kira Carsen's costumization 10?
Personally, I've been desperately looking for this item for 1 month and I can't get it. Would it be possible to put it on sale at the cartel bazaar like Raina Temple's customization 9?

I think you posted this in the wrong place, because this thread is about accessibility in the sense of people who have one or other (or more than one, even) problems that make it hard for them to play well, like certain types of poor vision, colour blindness, palsy of one sort or another, etc., and not for "how can I access (== get hold of) this item".

[Stradlin]

There should be more ways to tell relevant buffs and procs from irrelevant ones. Many specs have absolutely vital buffs that I'd like to see present as a huge aura on my char if I so wish.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Is there some reason that the trailors have no subtitles? 

The game is fine, but the lack of subtitles for those expensive cinematic trailors is off-putting when you're deaf.

[FlameYOL]

4 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Is there some reason that the trailors have no subtitles? 

The game is fine, but the lack of subtitles for those expensive cinematic trailors is off-putting when you're deaf.

That's actually a really good point. They definitely should have subtitles it.

[RowanThursday]

This is a slightly off-beat suggestion, but something I've mulled over for a while, and it occurs to me this is probably the appropriate place for it. 

For those of us somewhat noticeably on the autistic spectrum, which certainly includes myself, and, with no prejudice intended, you're likely to find a higher than average proportion of us amongst gamers, sci-fi fans, and indeed I suspect amongst game developers- the ability to manage input of information can be crucial to actually being able to relax and enjoy an experience, with being bombarded by too much unwanted visual or auditory spam at once being at best, off-putting and irritating.

Now, of course, everybody is different, so I'm sure there may be other people who live with autism who'll read this and think "Well, that doesn't cause me any problems..." but essentially I would suggest that care be taken to either not overwhelm the player with what I'd call 'screen spam' and what would more neutrally be called excessive on screen display messages.

Things like the "Login rewards" panel, and the guild conquest pop up of "This sector under the control of ...." - it would be helpful to be able to set preferences in settings to have these not auto-open.  We'll look at them if we want to know.

Outside of the UI, for crowded areas like the fleets or Odessen, it would actually be really helpful if it were possible to have a slider set for "render max number of players", to allow the user to customise how much other 'busy-ness' is going on on screen. Personally, I avoid fleet like the plague since all the constant insanity of people dashing about left, right, and centre, especially in loud speeders, gives me a headache and makes me feel vaguely ill rather quickly.

How that ought to work? Well, essentially, if you had the slider set to 10, for instance, then first off, the client would prioritise rendering yourself. Then, any player you were interacting with- duel, trade, group. Then, anyone else within your draw distance range. So, if you were in a full group of four, and duelling someone outside of that group, you'd see them plus the five nearest other players. This would obviously lead to a fair bit of dynamic rezzing and derezzing on the fly as you moved around- but we see the game do that anyway with players and npcs as they move out of range anyway. Setting the slider *too* low would probably lead to a certain amount of lag effect, I admit, but only client-side, and up to the user to find their 'sweet spot'.

Hiding companions attached to players not in your group would probably cut down on the crowds a lot as well, as an option.

Again, I'll emphasise, these suggestions wouldn't in any way negatively impact upon the gameplay of others. New or returning players who didn't know where to look for it would still be able to see the login rewards panel on login, players active in guilds would still be able to see the guild conquest pop-up, and the 'default' value for the 'max players to render' slider would still be set at whatever the game sets it 'under the hood' now, *anyway*- there would just be the option for users to personally hide these, and similar things, if need be.

[SteveTheCynic]

I would suggest that the *hard* lower limit on the number of players on the slider should be 16, because otherwise you'd see ... strange ... effects in non-arena (i.e. 8v8) warzones and in 16-man Operations.

[RowanThursday]

On 3/9/2023 at 7:22 PM, SteveTheCynic said:

I would suggest that the *hard* lower limit on the number of players on the slider should be 16, because otherwise you'd see ... strange ... effects in non-arena (i.e. 8v8) warzones and in 16-man Operations.

That's a fair point. Either have the limit at 16, or at least specify that a lower cap on the limit, of 16, would apply in warzones and operations, whichever were judged the better way of doing it.

[AnxheloAmg]

Each time we do heroics we get those tokens that can be converted into crates that gives you bound legacy armor but what if we got on Odessen or Fleet a vendor that can convert the duplicate armor piece into the one we actually need?

For example 50.000 credits would be reasonable price for piece of armor convert? Reason why I am saying is because Diablo 3 it has a guy with a cube called Kanai Cube which can convert the piece of armor set into needed one to complete full set so we can continue to do next objectives in the game.

It is really exhausting to do non stop heroics on different alts and we can't complete the full set for the legacy gear we actually want to use. Not sure if this can be implemented in the game but it would be actually a cool idea to have this kind of feature.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

Give us back the 'very low' shader setting in graphics. 

The 'low' setting makes the game too dark and it is harder on the eyes.

At the very least tell us why you took away the option to have the lower setting.  It's removing accessability from the game.

[AmityAmy]

13 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Give us back the 'very low' shader setting in graphics. 

The 'low' setting makes the game too dark and it is harder on the eyes.

At the very least tell us why you took away the option to have the lower setting.  It's removing accessability from the game.

Exactly this, 10 minutes on Oricon and Im getting headache

[mirrordances]

I agree with earlier comments that some of the story flashpoints are far too much of a slog and a real barrier to the accessibility of the story. I have chronic joint and muscle pain and I tend to play in short bursts with lots of rest (some conquest goals or story missions followed by some low-stress crafting or decorating in SH, for example). I never do non-story flashpoints or ops, because that much stress and tension for that long without a break will make my pain flare up.

I want to get to the Manaan and Ruhnuk stories - new planets, new dailies! I like both of those things! (And I want the Manaan decos.) But slogging through multiple story flashpoints that actually hurt me to play is miserable and unrewarding. I finally dragged myself through Spirit of Vengeance recently and there was nothing remotely enjoyable about the experience - the rooms were so dark I couldn't see the decos I assume were made for it (why are all indoor areas so dark now??), and the enemies were endless, closely-packed, and many had stealth detection (thanks SO much for nerfing the one method I had of minimizing slogging through enemies). I tired quickly but knew that if I gave up and stopped, I'd still be stuck at that point in the story and would have wasted my energy, so I pushed on (to my cost). By the time I finally finished it, I was hurting badly, incredibly exhausted, and really hating SWTOR.

Some possibilities for making currently-existing story flashpoints more accessible: several checkpoints in the middle? Perhaps after each boss? If, for example, every ship in SoV counted as its own story segment, so a player could play that segment and then log off, coming back to the same point to play the next segment on another day, that would significantly lessen the all-or-nothing burden those flashpoints are now. A general (opt-in) lower difficulty level would also be great, with fewer enemies, no stealth detection, etc. Let us speed through like a ghost to get to the next cutscene!

I love this game and have been playing it for over 8 years now. I don't want to be barred from story progression because required missions hurt to play.

 

[sahzodus]

Make augments be usable account wide. Like the black desert crystal system where you have a separate screen for them and every character in your account can use all those augments at the same time.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

2 hours ago, sahzodus said:

Make augments be usable account wide. Like the black desert crystal system where you have a separate screen for them and every character in your account can use all those augments at the same time.

Do you understand what this thread is for?  If so, then please explain how this is an accessablity issue.

[SteveTheCynic]

1 hour ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Do you understand what this thread is for?  If so, then please explain how this is an accessablity issue.

@sahzodus can't access those things, I guess.

@sahzodus : That's not what "accessibility" means in the context of this thread.  The thread's intent is for players to post about stuff that, because of the player's "obstructing factor"(1), make it hard to access the game.

(1) Weak vision, palsy of some sort, colour blindness, stuff like that.  The kind of things that might have been called "handicaps" in a less pointlessly sensitive time.

[pandoricashy]

Is it possible in the future to change the highlight of the selected target? Sometimes it is difficult to understand which target you have selected by pressing the TAB key. I wish it stood out more clearly. Well, for example, a yellow frame around the health bar or something similar. Thanks!

[Xewn]

Please revert the automatic resetting of dailies. This is just so incredibly frustrating. I often find I have to stop playing while I'm in the middle of one. Health issues can cause a sudden crash (of me, not the game). And then when I'm feeling well enough to go back and complete the daily I find that it's been reset. I'm also stuck in the middle of nowhere and I have to figure out getting back to somewhere I can pick up the daily again if I want to complete it. Adding a cost to QT starts to feel like a disability tax. If I was feeling better I wouldn't need QT as much. It's just so irksome and really turns me off of the game. Things that make travel and getting to missions more quickly help everyone, but they are especially helpful to disabled players who may have additional barriers to playing the game for longer periods of time or need to stop playing abruptly for health reasons.