Earcade — Accessibility
Last updated: 5 September 2026
Earcade is a collection of nine audio games. Sound is not a layer added on top of them, it is the game itself: position, movement, danger and success are carried by what you hear and what you feel. Every game can be played from beginning to end without looking at the screen. Several games also offer a mode that removes the visual layer almost completely, so that a sighted player plays the game the same way a blind player does.
How the games work
Spatial sound. Two of the games place their sounds in real three-dimensional space using binaural HRTF rendering, so a sound can be in front of you or behind you. The others use direct stereo placement, which gives up some realism in exchange for a sharper sense of left and right. Headphones are strongly recommended; the app reminds you when none are connected and the reminder disappears as soon as you plug them in.
Haptics. Vibration is a second channel, not decoration. Short impacts mark contact and selection, distinct patterns mark success and failure, and continuous patterns rise in intensity for things that build over time, such as approaching danger or a surface about to break. In some games the vibration carries information that the sound does not.
Nothing lives only on the screen. Scores, results and game events are spoken rather than left on screen, and each game's play area accepts your finger directly, so the games stay playable with a screen reader running.
Supported accessibility features
- VoiceOver on every screen. The main menu, game and difficulty selection, gameplay, results, the pause screen and settings all expose labelled elements to VoiceOver.
- The games stay playable while VoiceOver is on. Each play area is a direct interaction surface, so your finger drives the game instead of moving the VoiceOver cursor.
- Spoken results and events. Information that is not visible on screen — final scores, personal records, in-game events — is announced. When VoiceOver is running the app hands those announcements to VoiceOver instead of speaking over it, so you never hear two voices at once.
- A built-in screen reader mode. If you do not use VoiceOver, an optional accessibility mode in Settings reads the interface itself: move your finger to hear an element, double tap to activate it.
- Speech rate and voice. The speed of spoken feedback and the voice used for it can both be changed in Settings.
- Reduce Motion. When the system setting is on, the camera shake, tilt and squash effects are skipped in the seven games that use them. Gameplay itself is unchanged.
- No information is carried by colour alone. Selected items are shown by fill and brightness rather than hue, and every choice carries a text label, so the interface stays readable with any form of colour blindness.
- System text size in menus. The main menu, the settings screen and the start screens use the system text styles and follow your text size setting.
Known limitations
- Larger Text is not fully supported. Text drawn inside the games — scores, on-screen counters and game labels — uses fixed sizes and does not grow with your system text size. It is drawn large, but it does not scale. Menus, settings and start screens do scale.
- Without headphones the directional cues weaken. Left, right and distance are carried by stereo and binaural placement, and a single phone speaker collapses them into one point. The games remain playable, but direction becomes much harder to judge.
- Voice Control and switch input reach the menus, not the gameplay. Buttons and menu items can be operated that way, but the games are driven by continuous touch on the play surface and cannot currently be played with voice commands or a switch.
Feedback
If something in Earcade does not work for you, or if you need a feature that is missing here, please write: muratylln@gmail.com. Reports from people who play with a screen reader are especially useful and are read personally.