Controls & Accessibility

For the Mobility Impaired

As I previously mentioned, the gameplay system when on foot is almost directly lifted from Champions Online.  Character movement is achieved most practically through keyboard/switch input.  There is, unfortunately, no click-to-move option for those who typically rely on the mouse to play games, so the only way to control motion with the mouse is by holding down both mouse buttons to make your character move forward and moving the mouse to change direction.  This absence was largely anticipated as the feature was similarly not included in Champions Online.  At this point in the development process, it may not be something that could easily be implemented, but perhaps a future major patch would be an opportunity to introduce it.

Targeting of enemies can be done either by directly clicking on an enemy with the mouse or by "tabbing" through all available targets with the keyboard (this control can easily be switched to any other key, though).  To actually attack, one must either press the keyboard hotkey corresponding to a given attack or click on the corresponding function in the UI's action bar.  As with many MMOs, various skills and actions other than attacks are carried out in the same way.  For those who are unable to use the keyboard or a switch interface, combat on the ground can be a bit of a challenge.  Due to the fact that both mouse buttons must be held down to move the character around, those who can't simultaneously use a keyboard will be unable to attack or do anything else while moving.

In space, the control scheme is a bit more lenient.  Your ship's forward speed can be increased or decreased either by correspondent keyboard keys or by clicking on the throttle control in the UI.  Pitch and yaw can be controlled either with keyboard keys or by holding down both mouse buttons and moving the mouse similar to ground movement.  What makes this gameplay mode more mouse-friendly is the ability to have some of your weapons (e.g. your phasers) fire automatically.  That way, the player can focus on using the mouse to maneuver the ship and only need to worry about occasionally firing torpedoes or activating other skills.  Targeting in space is handled the same as on the ground, either by direct mouse selection or by cycling through available targets with the keyboard.

An interesting note here concerns the primary attack functionality of any given ground weapon (that is, what you are spamming your enemy with between shots from the more powerful secondary attack function).  The cooldown timer on these primary attacks is typically only one or two seconds, meaning that the player will need to be either pressing the corresponding keyboard key or clicking the mouse incredibly frequently.  For many with various types of mobility impairment, this repetitive task could very quickly become difficult.  During the open beta for STO, there was an option to right-click on this primary attack to set it to "autofire."  Once set, the player needed only to target an enemy and trigger the attack once.  It would then automatically repeat every cooldown until the enemy was defeated or the action was canceled.  This was an incredibly useful accessibility option as it allowed those who either had limited tolerance for repetitive clicking or lacked the mobility to switch between various attack types to focus on the secondary attack and other skills.  However, this functionality was inexplicably stripped from the game when it officially launched.  There seems to be no practical reason for this removal as far as I can tell, so perhaps Cryptic will eventually reimplement it when they realize the impact of axing it.

For the Hearing Impaired

There is very little voiceover work in STO, and what little there is always is transcribed -- either immediately as in the case of the tutorial pop-ups which are read aloud or archived in text format for later reading such as the brief lore elements read by Leonard Nimoy upon entering new areas.  Other than simple sound effects which lend nothing to actual gameplay beyond ambience, the only other significant audible elements are vocal notifications from your ship's computer when certain things happen.  For example, when one of your shields is about to go down, you'll receive an audible warning.  This is useful if you don't want to pay attention to your shields at all, but it isn't really necessary.  All of these notifications simply bring to your attention significant bits of information that are already provided in the UI.  Furthermore, these notifications are transcribed in the chat window, so their information is still available to those unable to hear them.

For the Visually Impaired

As with many games of this type, there is a lot of fine visual detail that may be difficult for some visually impaired players.  The icons for various skills are fairly small and at first could be difficult to map to their functionality.  Eventually, though, you grow accustomed to the layout of your interface and tend to remember actions by where they're positioned rather than what they look like.  For those who use screen magnifiers, a potentially useful feature of STO is the ability to completely rearrange the user-interface by positioning different modules (e.g. the action bar, the minimap, the area where pop-ups will appear) wherever you want them.  In this way, elements which most need to be magnified can be placed closer together to streamline the use of a magnifier.

The use of color shouldn't be much of a problem in STO.  The significant distinction between enemies and allies is designated by orange and blue respectively.  While red is used as a designator in various places, there is little to no use of green that could lead to confusion for colorblind players.

For the Cognitively Impaired

Depending on the degree of one's impairment, STO could either be fairly reasonable or frustratingly difficult.  This is primarily because of the same control issues that affect those with mobility impairments.  Because almost nothing happens "automatically" in STO, players must constantly be making split-second decisions to stay ahead.  As previously stated, this is most significant in ground combat.  The need to monitor one's shield status and health status, whilst doing the same for the entire party, can be taxing in and of itself in larger scale skirmishes.  Compounding that mental load by having to remember to constantly keep activating a primary fire ability while watching various cooldown timers for other abilities could potentially make this element of gameplay completely unfeasible for those with severe cognitive impairments.

One slight mitigating factor for ground combat's challenge to the cognitively impaired is the ability to pause -- not a common feature in most MMO games.  During ground PvE content, there is a button on the UI that can be clicked to pause the game for up to 45 seconds.  This is not enough time to "take a break" from play, but is certainly valuable to step back briefly from an intense situation and decide what to do next.