Christophe De bont 
17/09/2021
Little known fact: game companies patent some of their code to keep it from being used by the competition. Prolific features that have been patented include the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor and the dialogue wheel used in Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Good news then that Electronic Arts , the owner of the latter patent, have recently lifted all restrictions on the use of several accessibility solutions developed at the company.
EA is citing a desire for their competitors to build upon this foundation to create new features that make video games more inclusive. The pledge currently involves five patents but EA is identifying more technologies to open source in the future as well. This is excellent news for any developer that wants their video games to be played by a number of people with vision, speaking, hearing and cognitive disabilities.
Next to the Ping System from Apex Legends, which enables players to easily communicate without speech and a patent concerning personalised sound technology, EA is also open sourcing its code for a solution that adresses colour blindness, brightness and contrast issues. You can simply head over to GitHub and implement the technology directly into your own game.
Again, this is a really nice effort by Electronic Arts and we hope other companies working on similar technology quickly follow suit. The more people that get to experience video games the way they are meant to be played, the better.
