Anthem: Accessibility of in-game selection systems without sight

[SightlessKombat]

Product: Star Wars Battlefront II
Platform:Microsoft XBOX One
I want to talk about something you don't mention above: Anthem
How accessible is the current experience? It's useless to me
Summarize what in the product is difficult to use. In-game selections in Anthem look to be partially handled via cursor-based systems
How is this making it more difficult? Cursor-based menu systems, such as those seen in Destiny 2 and Assassin's creed origins, have a fatal flaw when it comes to accessibility to gamers without sight. Before I clarify the flaw, let me first provide context: A common method of navigating menu systems without sight, even if you know the menus well, is to count how many options up or down items are. This is facilitated via Dpad navigation and UI sounds which hopfeully are loud enough to let you achieve this. The flaw with cursor-based systems is that there's no way of telling where the cursor is on the screen without sighted assistance meaning I'm locked out from experiences and features that might improve my gameplay, including adjusting options and co-op missions, to name two.
How can we reproduce this experience? Play Destiny 2 or Assassin's Creed Origins and try and navigate the menus or start a game without any sighted assistance whatsoever and see whether you can complete the task without having to ask for assistance.

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Cursor-based menu systems,  such as those seen in Destiny 2 and Assassin's creed origins, have a fatal flaw when it comes to accessibility to gamers without sight.  Before I clarify the flaw, let me first provide context:

A common method of navigating menu systems without sight, even if you know the menus well, is to count how many options up or down items are.  This is facilitated via Dpad navigation and UI sounds which hopefully are loud enough to let you successfully obtain accurate information about how many items up or down you've moved, in addition to non-wrapping/looping menus (if the developers want to make their menus even more accessible).

The flaw with cursor-based systems is that there's no way of telling where the cursor is on the screen without sighted assistance.  As a result, I'm locked out from experiences and features that might improve my gameplay, including adjusting options and co-op missions, to name two, both of which I've experienced first-hand.

As to how these issues could be resolved, the easiest way (arguably in terms of usability), would be to allow for Dpad navigation as well as cursor-based selection, likely aiding not just gamers without sight but with fine motor issues for example to more easily select options.

Moreover, the Microsoft Speech Synthesis API (MSSA) revealed by Microsoft at GDC 2017 could be utilised along with haptic feedback when using bursor-based navigation to alert you when you're over options and indicate what they are as an alternative to DPad movement should you choose to use it.

Why is this an issue for a game that hasn't released yet?  Because it could limit communication with team members as well as interactions that could be linked to communications in Anthem, including selecting mission markers to start a mission, an integral part of team play.  It would be great to not have to worry about this when the game launches, so I thought I'd flag this issue up here beforehand after watching the 20 minutes of gameplay released post-E3 2018.

Hope this information helps.