EA announces it will patent 23 accessibility technologies that will be available to developers royalty-free “to reduce or eliminate as many barriers to access as possible and empower our gamers”

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What you need to know

  • Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that it will be patenting 23 new technologies to make gaming more accessible for more people.
  • The new technologies will be made available industry-wide free of royalties or licensing fees.
  • Six of the 23 newly patented technologies are set to be released this year, including Intelligent Personalized Speech Recognition, the IRIS plug in for Unreal Engine 5, and Emotion Based Music Style Change Using Deep Learning.

As a seasoned analyst with a personal connection to gaming and accessibility due to my own visual impairment, I am genuinely heartened by Electronic Arts’ (EA) commitment to making games more accessible for all players. The recent announcement of 23 new technologies patented under their Patent Pledge is a significant stride towards achieving this goal.

Following the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, certain video game companies have given insights into their recent initiatives aimed at dismantling obstacles and making gaming a more welcoming and accessible experience for all. Specifically, Xbox has reiterated its dedication by unveiling new accessibility features and emphasizing games that have seen enhancements in this area. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts (EA) is now joining the movement by disclosing they are adding 23 new patents to their Patent Pledge – a commitment to improving gaming opportunities for an expanded player base.

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In 2021, Electronic Arts (EA) unveiled an unprecedented Patent Pledge for accessibility innovations. Under this agreement, EA declared that they would own a range of technology patents designed to overcome the hurdles faced by individuals with diverse accessibility issues. Remarkably, other industries could utilize these patented technologies without incurring any royalties or licensing charges.

According to Kerry Hopkins, SVP of Global Affairs at EA, “We strongly feel that games should be open to all, and our top-tier teams are continuously seeking innovative methods to make this a fact. By sharing this technology with others, we are further committed to improving accessibility and inclusivity for players worldwide by eliminating unforeseen obstacles to participation.

Apart from the recently introduced patents, Electronic Arts (EA) will also introduce an IRIS plugin for Unreal Engine 5. This tool leverages EA’s photosensitivity analysis technology, enabling developers working on games within Unreal Engine 5 to scan their projects and flag frames that might trigger issues for players with photosensitivity.

Game developers can implement the IRIS plugin while their game is active, allowing it to identify sudden changes in brightness, intense red color flashes, and complex visual patterns which may trigger issues for players with photosensitive epilepsy or cause general discomfort to viewers.

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It’s been revealed that six out of the 23 innovative accessibility technologies, which were recently patented by EA, are anticipated to launch in the current year. Here are the six technologies on the list:

  • Intelligent Personalized Speech Recognition: Speech recognition system that improves the accuracy and efficiency of speech recognition by using personal phoneme mappings for each user, to better understand accent and other pronunciation variations such as those resulting from speech impairments.
  • Generating Expressive Speech Audio From Text Data: A system that generates expressive speech audio from text data, and provides more control and personalization of the generated speech based on desired speaking style and speaker attributes.
  • Generating Speech in the Voice of a Player of a Video Game : A system that can generate speech in the voice of a player, for their avatar, based on minimal sample speech data as compared with existing techniques.
  • Voice Aging Using Machine Learning: A system that can age an original input voice to a desired target age without requiring additional voice samples.
  • Emotion Based Music Style Change Using Deep Learning: A system that infers a player’s emotion while playing a video game and tunes the background soundtrack of the game to best fit that emotion.
  • Dynamically Selecting Speech Functionality on Client Devices: A system that automatically detects and enables speech recognition technologies available on a gaming device.

EA’s previously patented accessibility technologies also include Fonttik. Fonttik is a tool that identifies text in visual content and determines whether it meets specified size and contrast ratio criteria, making it easier to check that the text can be read by players with varying vision conditions. Apex Legends’ “ping system” is another accessibility technology from EA that is widely used by an overwhelming number of players, it’s also become a standard for team-based games. Even titles like Call of Duty have instituted similar ping systems as a result of its success.

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2024-12-05 19:39