EA makes more patents public in commitment to improve gaming accessibility

As part of its commitment to making gaming as accessible to as many people as possible, EA has pledged 23 new patents to share across the industry via its accessibility portal.

The new patents include tools to help developers run real-time testing for photosensitivity, as well as improvements in speech and audio generation and recognition.

Included amongst the patents is an Unreal Engine 5 plugin that uses EA's photosensitivity analysis tech, IRIS, to "analyse and identify, in real-time as they're running their games, frames that could potentially impact players who experience photosensitivity".

Among the patents added this year are:

"We believe that games should be accessible to everyone and our industry-leading teams are always looking for new ways to make this a reality," said Kerry Hopkins, SVP of global affairs at EA.

"By making this technology available to others, we continue to work to enhance accessibility and inclusivity for players around the world by removing unintended barriers to access."

These latest patents come after EA "opened up" its accessibility toolsand technology for "wider use to help gamers" in 2021. Included in the first accessibility patent pledge wasApex Legends' celebrated "ping" system.

In a statement at the time, EA reiterated its commitment to inclusivity by making its accessibility tools available publicly via open source.