A talk about what visual design leaves out

The central proposition of Tomáš Farkaš’s presentation is straightforward but demanding: a game made for blind players cannot treat sound as a decorative replacement for graphics. It must make sound carry the information that sighted players normally acquire instantly from a screen.

The video, published by Slovak gaming outlet Sector.sk on 16 August 2026, introduces the talk as an exploration of digital games made entirely without graphics, the realities of blind people’s everyday orientation, and the experience of understanding a world primarily through sound. Its Slovak title translates approximately as “What You Do Not See When Making a Game for Blind Players”.

That wording points to a larger lesson for the games industry. Accessibility is often discussed as a collection of settings added close to release: larger text, high-contrast modes, subtitle controls or remappable inputs. Those features can be essential. Yet a game designed around non-visual play raises a more foundational question: how can a player understand where they are, what matters, what is happening and what actions are possible without requiring a sighted person to interpret the screen?

Sound becomes the playable environment

In a conventional game, a player may see a path, an enemy animation, a highlighted object, a health bar and a distant objective at the same time. An audio-first experience has to distribute that information in time. The player listens, acts, checks their position and listens again. Sound therefore needs to establish direction, distance, urgency, material and change without becoming an indistinct wall of effects.

Farkaš’s academic work on auditory space in games describes this as more than a technical issue. The design of loudness, placement, movement and attenuation — the way a sound changes with distance — affects whether players can build a usable mental model of a virtual location. A sound indicating an objective is not merely an interface prompt; its volume, direction and behaviour as the player moves can communicate where that objective is and whether the player is approaching it.

This makes a familiar game-design task unusually visible. Visual games also rely on signals that guide players through spaces and systems, but they can use arrows, icons, colour, lighting and camera framing. When those tools disappear, every game-critical cue has to be intentional. A door needs to be identifiable. A menu needs to announce where focus is. A threat needs a readable sonic identity. A boundary needs to be discoverable rather than learned through repeated failure.

The challenge is not to fill every moment with narration. Too much spoken explanation can slow play, mask important effects and reduce the pleasure of exploration. The stronger approach is to make the game world itself legible: footsteps, surfaces, machinery, voices, weather and environmental activity can collectively convey a place if they are distinct and reliable.

Navigation is also a question of agency

Free movement is one of the hardest problems in games for blind and low-vision players. Linear experiences can communicate a next step relatively directly, but broad spaces raise questions about orientation, side activities and discovery. If a game automatically guides a player to every objective, it may remove the opportunity to explore and make decisions. If it provides too little support, progress may depend on trial and error or assistance from another person.

This is why navigation support should be understood as an agency tool rather than simply an aid. Directional audio, optional guidance pings, voiced status checks and clear signals for interactable objects can let a player choose a destination while retaining control over the route. A useful system tells players enough to act independently, but does not necessarily solve every spatial problem for them.

Industry guidance reflects this balance. Microsoft’s accessibility recommendations call for game-critical visual information to have an additional non-visual means of identification, including spatial audio, haptics or screen narration. Guidance from the Royal National Institute of Blind People likewise notes that audio cues can support navigation without forcing a fully linear route, while stressing that cues should fit the game’s world and preserve immersion.

The consequence for developers is practical: accessibility cannot begin only with a settings screen. It affects level layouts, objective design, enemy behaviour, combat timing, menus, tutorials, save systems and failure states. An inaccessible opening calibration screen, for example, can prevent a player from reaching the accessibility options intended to help them.

Audio-first design does not mean audio-only audiences

Farkaš’s work connects the talk to an active Slovak audio-game effort. He is listed as a sound designer at Blind Octopus Studios, whose projects use smartphones, gesture controls and sensors alongside narrative and spatial sound. The studio presents its work as intended to connect sighted and visually impaired players rather than to separate them into different products.

That aim matters because audio-led interaction can enrich a game for many players, not solely those who cannot see. Precise environmental sound can deepen atmosphere, clarify action and reduce dependence on cluttered interfaces. Separate volume controls can help players foreground critical effects or dialogue. Clear descriptions and well-structured menus can benefit people using assistive technology, but they can also improve usability for anyone playing in a distracting environment.

However, a sound-centred design still needs to account for differing hearing, equipment and sensory preferences. Directional audio should not be the only route to understanding a game state. Players may use speakers rather than headphones, hear differently in each ear, play in noisy surroundings or need to reduce overwhelming effects. Contemporary accessibility frameworks therefore emphasise controls for individual audio categories and alternatives to any single sensory channel.

The broader point is that inclusion has to avoid replacing one exclusion with another. A game designed around spatial sound should still consider captions, readable text, visual alternatives, mono sound and adjustable mixes where appropriate.

Testing with players is the decisive step

The most important development practice is not a particular audio engine or checklist. It is involving blind and low-vision players throughout production. A sighted developer can close their eyes to notice obvious barriers, but cannot reproduce the experience of navigating technology with established assistive tools, personal strategies and different levels of sight.

Early testing can reveal problems that become expensive to correct later: an ambiguous cue, an inaccessible tutorial, menu focus that is not announced, an objective that cannot be located independently, or a soundscape that is atmospheric but too busy for action. It can also identify opportunities that design teams may otherwise overlook, including mechanics where listening is not a compromise but the source of challenge and enjoyment.

Farkaš’s presentation is therefore timely beyond the niche of audio games. It frames blindness not as a final compliance test, but as a perspective that exposes how much games conventionally assume visual access. Designing around that fact can produce more than an accessible version of an existing idea. It can lead to different worlds, different mechanics and a more deliberate understanding of what players need in order to play on their own terms.

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