I’ve talking to a client about using Unity instead of Flash to develop a public health simulation. But since the project has government funding, accessibility (as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act) is an issue. And although I’m familiar with the laws about accessibility and Web sites, I’m not entirely sure how they’d relate to a Unity simulation. Is Unity exposed to OS-level accessibility tools like screen readers and mouse mods? Has anyone grappled with this?
Hey Gecko, I also have the same question and I haven’t found any information which explains whether Unity is an accessible plugin.
My guess would be that it isn’t, Im assuming that given the fact that no one type of game or virtual interaction would ever work in a standard manner or indeed the same way then and that the level of interaction possible is beyond that of HTML and CSS there is no possible way that Unity could create a system to allow for accessibility to even the basic web standard levels.
I think the only option would be to have a non-Unity alternative (HTML and CSS info only site).
The issue then is, does Unity have something like swfObject to detect if you dont have the player installed and therefore provide you with a HTML only version?
This is probably too late for your app project, but maybe it can help others (I landed here via Google, too)
There is a plugin called UAP that recreates screen reader functionality for Unity UI. It works like VoiceOver and TalkBack, and actually uses the native VoiceOver speech for text-to-speech output.
We also develop simulations in Unity, and we have done a lot of work on accessibility for our browser-based simulations. Unity has almost no accessibility features. UAP was not much better. We were obliged to make the GUI in the DOM, so that we could fulfil WCAG requirements.
I don’t think it’s the right approach to duplicate screen reader behavior in a plugin like UAP. That’s a solution which might just protect your firm from getting sued for a brief period, but it’s not viable in the longer term. Compliance with WCAG (or a similar standard) is now mandatory in various jurisdictions, including the USA and the EU, so if you’re relying on public sector financing your Unity-based project in these regions, you should be aware of this.
Unity should also be aware that they are liable to lose customers/users for the same reason. Implementing accessibility can be a major undertaking, so I hope they have this on their roadmap before their customers start getting sued.
The Right Thing for Unity to do is to ensure that an accessibility tree may be generated for any UI elements, which other assistive tech (screen readers etc.) can consume and present to the user in a way that suits them (and their disabilities).