S8:E9 - Diablo Immortal and Video Game Accessibility, The Challenges of Creating an AR System, The Recent Wave of Tech Layoffs, and More

This week we’re talking about the recent wave of tech layoffs, and React Eurasia’s controversial decision to locate this year's conference in Dubai. Then we speak with Steven Spohn, senior director of development at The AbleGamers Charity Foundation about Diablo Immortal’s native voice chat transcription and speech-to-text accessibility feature, and where we are in terms of accessible design in the video game industry as a whole. Finally, we speak with Jeri Ellsworth, co-founder and CEO of Tilt Five about what some of the inherent challenges are with creating AR devices that might be making it difficult for both Apple and Google to launch the glasses they’ve been talking about for years.

Show Notes

• DevDiscuss (sponsor)
• CodeNewbie (sponsor)
• Avalanche (sponsor)
• React Eurasia's 2022 Location Twitter Announcement
• The Split-Screen Job Market: Low Unemployment, High Turnover, Plenty Of Openings—And More Layoff Headlines
• Diablo Immortal will launch with native voice chat transcription and speech-to-text
• The AbleGamers Charity
• accessible.games
• Tilt Five

Steven Spohn

Steven Spohn is an expert in the field of technology and disability.

Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri Ellsworth's love for invention began with building race cars before working with hardware design, creating a complete Commodore 64 system on a chip housed within a joystick, called C64 Direct-to-TV. In 2011, she was hired by Valve Software to build and run their R&D team and was a key contributor to the technology used in the popular HTC Vive virtual reality headset. While at Valve, she began work on the AR technology that would become the basis for the technology behind Tilt Five. Her vision for the future of gaming is driving innovation for the entire Tilt Five team.