Youtube user Kephas demonstrates how to play WoW blind
Everyone remembers the story of Hexu and Davidian, a completely blind player and his helpful friend who acts as a guide dog of sorts to help Hexu find his way. While Youtube user and avid WoW player Kephas isn't completely blind like Hexu, he has no vision in his left eye at all, limited sight in his right, and no peripheral vision. Despite this, Kephas still manages to play World of Warcraft just fine, and decided to make a video to show everyone just what it's like to play WoW as a visually-impaired player.
In the video, Kephas goes over his UI and the addons he uses to make playing possible, even going so far as to provide a demonstration of his dps on a handy target dummy, then following that up with a jaunt to successfully and easily solo Onyxia's Lair. Kephas followed up the first video with a second that details and explains how he plays a variety of classes through the use of clever macros. Paladin, monk, warrior, hunter and death knight all get a play through and some test time on target dummies in the follow up video. While some characters are admittedly better geared than others, Kephas still manages to pull plenty of dps with each.
My eyesight is terrible -- I've been wearing glasses since second grade. But even as someone with poor vision, it's still a little difficult to picture exactly how someone who is visually-impaired actually goes about playing the game on a daily basis, which is why Kephas' video is so interesting to me. You can see exactly how he lays everything out, and begin to get a glimpse into what it's like to play a game with little to no vision at all -- and it only emphasizes just how useful addons and macros are when it comes to helping people play the game.
While his UI may look odd to some, and the text may look too large, to Kephas, this is simply the way things are, the way things work, and how he plays. I'm glad he decided to share a little bit of his day-to-day in Azeroth with us. Check out the video, and follow Kephas over on Youtube if you'd like to see more gameplay videos from other games.
