Unity Developers Get Native Screen Reader Support on macOS and Windows

Big news for game developers and players! Unity is rolling out a major update to its game engine, bringing native screen reader support to both macOS and Windows. This exciting new feature is currently available in the Unity 6000.3.0a5 alpha, and it’s set to make creating accessible games for blind and low-vision players significantly more straightforward and affordable for developers, as highlighted by Can I Play That?.

For those unfamiliar, screen readers are vital tools that narrate on-screen text and menus, empowering blind and low-vision users to navigate software and games independently. Historically, integrating such accessibility has been a hefty task. Developers often had to build custom screen reader solutions from the ground up for each game, a process that demands significant time and resources. As accessibility consultant Steve Saylor wisely pointed out, “Building something like that from scratch has to be decided upon early in development… Having it in-engine can mean the heavy lifting is done for you, and the cost of time/resources now is significantly lower.” This native integration truly simplifies things.

This isn’t Unity’s first foray into comprehensive accessibility. They already provided APIs for Android and iOS’s built-in screen readers back with the Unity 6.0 release. However, the crucial additions of Windows Narrator and macOS VoiceOver support were still pending – until now! With this new alpha, which is slated to become part of the full Unity 6.3 release, developers will finally have access to native screen reader support across all of Unity’s major platforms. Given Unity’s immense popularity within the game development world, this move has the potential to dramatically enhance the accessibility of countless future games, opening them up to a wider audience than ever before.