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My name is Toby Ott and I'm 27 years old
I have quite a few hobbies I love
watching television and films I also
love watching YouTube videos and I am
also a video game fan, I've been playing
video games for quite a long time now
since 5 years old. I've been blind since birth I was born with a condition called
bilateral anopthalmia
which means born without eyes it's quite
rare I think it's like one in a hundred
thousand children are born with it every year
or something like that. I went to
mainstream school primary and secondary
and then when I was 16 I went to the
Royal National College for the blind in
Hereford for three years and studied
Music AS level as well as a BTech in
performing arts. After that I went to
Lewisham College to study business IT
and I got a HND in Business IT.
Being blind obviously getting around it's
quite a difficult thing, I have when I was younger had to learn to use a white cane,
and when I was at Hereford when
I was 16 obviously I had to then even at
school as well I had to learn the routes
to get around the building so I could
get to classes on my own
after that I managed to be
independent and I used to when I was at
Hereford come home on the train on my
own from Hereford to London Paddington.
In terms of the way I read and write,
I started learning braille when I was
three. I am currently using a braillenote touch,
which is the first braille tablet in
the world that also works with Android
as well and it has built-in speech
software, as well as a braille display and touch screen.
I learned how to touch type because I went on a
touch typing course and when I actually
use the computer, I use on my Windows
computer I use a screen reader called
jaws and on my Apple Mac it has a
built-in speech software called
voiceover so if I want to watch that
video I press I select it
and there we go!
I've been a video game fan since 5 years
old in an arcade where I played Mortal
Kombat 1 and Street Fighter. Since then I
after that I bought a PlayStation and
the first two games I ever had were Star
Gladiator, which was a space fighting
game and Tekken 2. I played
Soul Calibur which is another brilliant
fighting game series and I beat my
friends when we fight each other. in 2003
I bought a PlayStation 2 as well as
Final Fantasy X. With the help of my
friend and my cousins I was able to
learn how the menu system and battle
system work and I've been able to play
the game including walk around different
areas and fight the random encounters
and the boss battles. I've also now got
into game modding, so I download Doom 2 WADs from a archive and I play in
terms of shooting the monsters and I
have been lucky enough to complete a
larger number of maps over the last 10
years of playing Doom regularly.
I really enjoy RPG games like Final Fantasy for
example because I love a game with a
good storyline and interesting boss
fights and
music the music as well as a big part
for me in terms of gaming.
There's a big thunderstorm, there's lightning strikes
everywhere and you've got to try
and dodge the lightning in order to get
across safely without getting stuck
I enjoy the voice acting as well because
voice acting is a way that you get to feel
attached to the character or characters
in the story. I also enjoy fighting games
because I like to fight against my
friends or fight online against people
and I have beaten people online before
with higher ranked than me.
I also like first-person shooters like the old
classics, Doom and Duke Nukem because I
love the sound effects of the monsters
and I also enjoyed seeing how many
monsters I can kill with one shot with the different weapons.
Because I'm blind I can't access all the health packs and
all the armor so I use god mode so that
I can actually enjoy the maps. I also use
a cheat where I can go through the walls
because I can't find all the keys to the
doors and because I can't complete all
maps I also use a level select cheat as well
Videogames are challenging to play
because obviously they're very visual
but I enjoy the challenge of learning
how to play these games like Final
Fantasy for instance, just trying to do
the same stuff that gamers do generally.
I got stuck on a boss in Final Fantasy 10
for eight weeks and I kept trying and
trying and trying and failing and then
eventually I defeated it and I was like
"finally I've done it! Brilliant! Now I
can see what happens next in the story"
it's just the thrill of spending
time beating a hard game and thinking oh
my god I've actually beaten this without
help after learning the ropes with my
friend and it's just that amazing
feeling it really is an amazing feeling.
so when I learn how to play a video game
my friend has to teach me how to
navigate each menu so where certain
stuff is in a menu, and then once I know
how to navigate that menu I try it
myself to see if I can actually do it.
In games like Final Fantasy for example
music is a really important factor
because the music identifies the area
that you're in.
What I always try to do is aim for a save point generally -
Ah, I'm in Macalania.
So I know that if I'm on a high road or
in a cave for example the music for that
area plays, and if a battle begins the
music changes so I know whether I'm in
a normal battle or a boss battle for example.
Some fighting games like Injustice: Gods Among Us for example have
audio cues so you can identify where you
are on the screen in the arena, which is
really useful especially if it's an
arena that has say water that you
can fall into, it gives you an indication
of what part the arena you're
fighting in and whether you have to move
the other way in order to avoid certain traps.
There are some games that unfortunately I can't play. So that I
get an understanding of what the game
and the story is all about, I normally
watch the walkthroughs on YouTube so
that I can still enjoy the story of that particular game.
Whilst playing these games, listening to the music,
the voice acting, the cutscenes, I really
imagine what the world is like and what
the game wants you to think about in
terms of the way the characters who
live in that world. I do imagine when I'm
sleeping or even just when I'm thinking
about what the world is like
Like for example the characters are
going on the journey and I'm going on
the journey with those characters and
imagining what they're feeling about the
whole world and its people and I just
find that that is important when it comes to a game.
In order to improve video games for blind people I think
personally one of the most important
things that need to be put in is audio
description for cutscenes for example so
that when there is a point in the
cutscene where there's no talking
between the characters someone could
describe what's going on or the area
that you're in in the game and say the
different directions you can go in that
area in order to get to another a new
area for example. Also maybe having some
form of built-in screen reader in a game
could prove useful. I also think
that having audio navigation of menus
would be useful. I played a fighting game
called Virtua Fighter 4 and what was
great about that is that it had audio
navigation in the menu so I knew what
each item was in that menu so I actually
didn't need help from
my friend to navigate that menu because
I was able to access it independently.
I know it could be done especially
having audio explaining where you are
and how you can navigate around that area.
I would say you know any blind
person out there, try a video game of some kind whether it be a
RPG or a fighting game or even a
shooting game for instance like Doom.
Even if you play it with a sighted
friend and then learn how to navigate
around the game and you will get
absorbed into the world that the game
wants you to learn about and it's been a
big part of my life, it's been great fun
and I still enjoy it even today and I
really want other blind people to
try these video games because they
will, I hope, feel the same way