Developer of Pokémon GO sued by NJ man claiming lack of accessibility for the visually impaired
A Hudson County man filed two separate lawsuits against Niantic, Inc., the augmented reality mobile game developer behind Pokémon GO, saying the popular app and the company's website discriminate against the visually impaired.
Carlos Herrera, a North Bergen resident who is visually impaired, said Niantic's lack of accommodations is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court on Tuesday, stated that the law is clear that consumers with disabilities should have similar access to web content and that companies are required to include screen readers and other assistive measures.
According to the suit, many applications and websites can use screen reading technology but if content is unable to be rendered into text, a visually impaired person wouldn't be able to access the same content a sighted person can.
Niantic did not respond to email for comment.
There are guidelines published by W3C, the international mobile app standards organization, to ensure everyone has equal access to mobile apps.
The suit stated the a number of the app's features "fail to accurately describe the contents of graphical images, fail to properly label title, fails to distinguish one page from another, contain headings that do not describe the topic or purpose, and contain text that is not read."
The inaccessibility of Pokémon GO for certain users has been discussed several times by the American Foundation for the Blind.
In 2016, the foundation wrote about how the game could be made accessible. Lee Huffman, the former AccessWorld editor for the American Foundation for the Blind, and Aaron Preece, current AccessWorld editor, wrote in September 2016 that making Pokémon GO more accessible is not as easy.
Pokémon GO uses the Unity engine, which helps streamline game developments.
"Unfortunately, Unity does not appear to natively support Apple's VoiceOver protocols for communicating element information," the editor's page said.
Huffman and Preece said Niantic would need to add "VoiceOver compatibility from scratch." They noted that it isn't impossible to do and that other independent game developers have been working to add this compatability to Unity.
"Adding VoiceOver accessibility to the Pokémon GO app may require more time and resources than it would for an app that uses native controls, but it is possible," Huffman and Preece said.
In a April 2022, Preece revisited the discussion about Pokémon GO and using third-party apps to potentially make it more accessible.
He said while the app has never been made accessible, he has been able to play a majority of the game using Screen Recognition, a third-party VoiceOver feature. However, the game still had issues and some parts of the game were still inaccessible.
Preece questioned whether or not if developers would put in the effort to add accessibility to mobile apps. He said technology like Screen Recognition could make mistakes or may not be able to make an app like Pokémon GO completely accessible.
"I always thought that the increasing acceptance of technology access in the mainstream would be what drove accessibility for people with vision loss forward, but now I wonder if technologies like this, that bypass a developer completely, won't be what drives a good deal of accessibility in the future," Preece said in his editorial.
Herrera is looking to have Niantic change its "corporate policies, practices and procedures" to allow visually impaired people to access the app in addition to seeking damages, fees, costs and injunctive relief.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Pokémon GO creator Niantic sued by New Jersey resident
