Blind gamers may soon be able to play racing video games on a level footing with sighted players, using a device which turns a visual display into sound.

Columbia University engineering PhD candidate Brian Smith has developed the RAD (racing auditory display) so visually-impaired gamers can play the same types of racing games - with the same speed, control and excitement - that sighted players play.

The audio-based interface, which a player can listen to using a standard pair of headphones, can be integrated by developers into almost any racing video game, making a popular genre of games equally accessible to people who are blind.

“The RAD is the first system to make it possible for people who are blind to play a ‘real’ 3D racing game, with full 3D graphics, realistic vehicle physics, complex racetracks, and a standard PlayStation 4 controller,” says Smith, who worked on the project with computer science Professor Shree Nayar. “It’s not a dumbed-down version of a racing game tailored specifically to people who are blind.”

While there are a number of games on the market suitable for the blind, many are loaded with competing sources of information that players must sift through, slowing down the fun of playing the game. Others are versions of popular games so simplified that a blind gamer does nothing more than follow orders. There has been a fundamental tradeoff between preserving a game’s full complexity and its pace when making it blind-accessible.

“Our challenge,” says Smith, “was to give visually-impaired players enough information about the game so that they could have the same sense of control and thrill that sighted players have, but not so much information that they would get overwhelmed or bogged down in just figuring out how to interpret the sounds.”

Smith, who is based in New York, hopes to create similar systems for other genres of games, including adventure games, role-playing games, and first-person shooters. “My hope,” he adds, “is that game designers will soon be able to build game systems from a suite of tools that are similarly intuitive and functional to the RAD, and make their video games equally accessible to people who are blind. We think the RAD marks the beginning of a whole new suite of such tools.”