After being blind for ten years, he found the feeling of being a great hero here.
In the summer of 2024, the golden cudgel of "Black Myth: Wukong" pierced through the sky of the gaming world.
While millions of players were indulging in the visual feast like a Chinese ink - wash painting, in a corner not illuminated by the spotlight, a special player was interpreting this mythical world in another way.
There was always darkness in front of her eyes, but in her ears echoed the whistling of the golden cudgel breaking through the air, the tinkling of mountain streams, and the drumming - like heartbeat during boss battles.
A player who became blind due to a rare neurological disease finally defeated the first boss in Black Myth after fifteen failures, guided only by sound.
This is the story of "a girl with only a faint sense of light playing Black Myth: Wukong" told by a developer at the 2025 Technology Accessibility Development Conference.
It's worth noting that although this streamer used the screen - reading function, she still passed the not - so - difficult first level only after several failures with the help of the live - stream viewers.
This story raises a question: In an era when people are pursuing 4K, ray - tracing, and seamless interaction, how difficult is it for people with visual, hearing, or physical disabilities to play games? And what kind of gaming world do they envision?
For a long time, the mainstream public opinion's attention to people with disabilities has often been limited to - how visually impaired people travel, how hearing - impaired people find jobs, and how people with physical disabilities make a living by street - performing... Behind this kind of pity - filled narrative, there is a kind of condescending and implicit discrimination: it seems that people with disabilities should only focus on basic life and work.
However, beyond basic survival, how to achieve a high - quality life is also worthy of being seen and discussed.
A person who became blind later in life once said, "The first thing I felt after going blind was not the inconvenience of life, but a huge spiritual gap."
He could no longer watch movies or play games with friends as before, nor could he take a stroll on the street at will.
This sense of meaninglessness of being excluded from the world is more suffocating than the boundless darkness and silence.
A Spanish study, "Combined Vision and Hearing Difficulties Results in Higher Levels of Depression and Chronic Anxiety: Data From a Large Sample of Spanish Adults, Frontiers in Psychology", analyzed the cases of 23,809 adults and found that when both vision and hearing problems occur simultaneously, the risk of depression is 3.85 times that of the general population, and the risk of anxiety disorder increases by 3.38 times.
This means that people with disabilities are at a higher risk of suffering from various mental illnesses.
According to United Nations data, in 2025, the total number of people with disabilities globally exceeded 1.3 billion, which means that 1 in every 6 people in the world lives with some kind of disability.
However, the whole society's attention to accessibility still remains at the level of basic living guarantees such as blind paths, wheelchairs, and living subsidies. Few people ask whether they, like us, long for entertainment, such as playing games?
The British charity organization SCOPE conducted a survey on game accessibility called "Accessibility in gaming report". The results show that people with disabilities have the same, or even stronger, entertainment needs as able - bodied people.
There were 1,326 respondents in this survey, including 812 disabled players and 514 able - bodied players.
66% of disabled players said they encountered difficulties when playing games, mostly because there was no matching accessibility technology; 41% of disabled players said that due to the lack of in - game accessibility design, they bought games but couldn't play them; 40% of disabled players said they were attacked and discriminated against on the platform.
However, different from the accumulated difficulties, the surveyed disabled group showed a stronger interest in games.
54% of disabled players use the interest forum Discord to discuss game design and level - passing skills (only 44% of able - bodied players do so); 63% of disabled players pay to buy game equipment (only 50% of able - bodied players do so). To access games, these people with physical disabilities spend an average of £583 more per month (equivalent to 5,735 yuan) than ordinary players on purchasing related services.
Research and data prove that people with disabilities also have the need for game entertainment. However, limited by technology, social concepts, and money, their experience is far inferior to that of ordinary players.
