will blind gamers ever play Zelda like I do? (part 2)
kill switch
Kaleidoscope
4.7 • 635 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a blind video gamer, the options for the kinds of games you can play are limited. Not only are accessibility features not a standard practice in game development, the tools available right now only go so far. Exploration – a fundamental part of the fun in gaming, especially in an open world game – is often not really possible for blind players in today’s games. Researchers at Columbia University are working to change that. Dexter talks to Brian Smith and Vishnu Nair, who are developing tools for blind and low vision gamers to be able to play exploration-based games that could one day even be applied to a game like Zelda Breath of the Wild.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
CEAL at Columbia University: https://ceal.cs.columbia.edu/navstick/
Ross Minor profile in WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/ross-minor-the-blind-leading-the-gamers/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:07.0 | The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, |
| 0:14.0 | until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. |
| 0:20.9 | America, y'all better work the hell up. |
| 0:22.9 | Bad things happens to good people in small towns. |
| 0:32.5 | Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:38.9 | And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:46.5 | I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. |
| 0:50.1 | And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. |
| 0:54.7 | A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. |
| 0:58.1 | And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. |
| 1:02.9 | How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? |
| 1:09.7 | Listen to heavyweight on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:17.1 | Malcolm Gladwell here. |
| 1:18.5 | This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, |
| 1:24.6 | where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. |
| 1:28.2 | And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough. |
| 1:32.9 | And I didn't kill him. |
| 1:34.7 | From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. |
| 1:39.0 | Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your |
| 1:45.9 | podcasts. |
| 1:47.1 | When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully |
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