Control Settings accessibility: Narrator: Profile selection and control-specific settings are not accessible to blind sim pilots using the built-in Narrator screenreader

Bug Reporting Hub User Interface & Activities
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ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Accessibility in MSFS 2024 for blind sim pilots such as myself has very greatly improved compared to MSFS 2020, with the built-in Narrator screenreader being so much more responsive, intuitive and much more reliable across the board. So, I’d like to start by thanking the team working on this for doing such an outstanding job in making MSFS 2024 more accessible and inclusive, it’s really greatly appreciated!

Unfortunately, one important area that is very difficult to navigate using Narrator is the Controls Settings screen, particularly when it comes to profile selection and per-control settings. In particular, the following accessibility issues are currently present on this screen:

  1. Profile switching and editing:
    • When selecting a device to view or modify its control bindings, Narrator does not announce which profile is currently active, thus making it impossible for a Narrator user to quickly tell which profile they are currently viewing or editing.
    • The controls to switch between profiles are not announced by Narrator at all. When moving the selection cursor to these controls, e.g. to switch to a new general, airplane or aircraft-specific profile, there is no speech feedback provided indicating what is selected. For users unfamiliar with the user interface, there would be no way of knowing that the cursor has moved at all, or that these controls exist in the first place.
    • When pressing one of these controls to switch profiles, Narrator does not announce which profile has now been activated, or if a new profile has been activated at all in case there was no other profile to switch to.
    • To the right of the profile switching controls, there are menu buttons used to bring up profile-specific options such as Create, Duplicate, Export, etc. While Narrator does announce these buttons, they do not appear to have proper accessibility labels and are being announced as “$AltText”, making the purpose of these buttons very unclear. Narrator also does not speak any semantic information for these buttons, making it challenging to know which profile this menu control is associated with.

  2. Control assignments and per-control settings:
    • After selecting a device from the list and navigating to an assignment in the list, pressing Space on it allows users to assign a new control by making an input using the selected device (e.g. moving an axis, pushing a button, etc). However, this isn’t being announced by Narrator, making it unclear to users that the sim is waiting for an input.
    • When focused on a control with an assignment, pressing Right Arrow twice will move the focus to a Control Actions button, which is properly announced by Narrator. When pressed, this button brings up a screen allowing users to adjust control-specific settings, such as inverting an axis, adjusting dead zone or sensitivity values, or changing the input assignment entirely by choosing from a list of available inputs. Unfortunately, the majority of this screen is not spoken by Narrator at all, rendering most interface elements completely inaccessible and unusable. This is particularly problematic for users with special physical needs such as motor impairments, who may be using hardware such as the Microsoft Xbox Adaptive Controller, presenting a need for being able to make extensive control adjustments for the best experience. This is a particularly serious accessibility issue currently present in MSFS 2024 Narrator, and should be considered high priority.

I really hope that all of the above issues can be addressed in an upcoming software update, giving blind and visually impaired flight sim enthusiasts such as myself the ability to fully customize and configure hardware bindings according to our needs and preferences. The Narrator screenreader, generally speaking, has seen some vast improvements in 2024 as compared to its predecessor, making the shortcomings in this area particularly stand out.

I’d personally love to provide feedback on any fixes and improvements in this area, also happy to provide additional details and clarifications if needed.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

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That’s some next-level IFR flying right there!
Kudos.

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Thanks for raising this — can confirm all of these issues from my own use of Narrator on the Controls screen. The Control Actions sub-screen is especially painful; I recently spent a lot of time dialling in sensitivity and dead zone on a new joystick and had to work almost entirely by trial and error because nothing on that screen is spoken, or when the slider values are they can be unrelyable. Profile switching has caught me out too — with no announcement of the active profile it’s far too easy to edit the wrong one.
Really hope Asobo can address these. Narrator in 2024 is so much better overall that this area really stands out.

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I would like to fully support everything described in this post, as it accurately reflects my experience as a blind MSFS user.
While accessibility in MSFS 2024 has indeed improved significantly overall—especially thanks to the much better behavior of Narrator—the Controls Settings screen remains extremely difficult to use without sight. The issues outlined here regarding profile management and control configuration are absolutely real and create a great deal of confusion in practice.
In particular, the lack of feedback about which profile is currently active is a major problem. Since MSFS 2024 requires separate profiles per device and even per aircraft, it becomes very frustrating to constantly verify—using OCR with a screen reader—whether the correct profile is selected for each device. This turns what should be a simple task into a slow and error-prone process.
Configuring new devices is even more challenging. Without proper Narrator feedback, it is very hard to understand what is happening on screen, and in many cases I end up having to ask for assistance from sighted users just to complete basic setup tasks.
This is not just an inconvenience—it directly limits independence for blind simmers and makes it much harder to fully enjoy the simulator.
Additionally, although I understand this may be considered a separate issue from the main topic of this thread, I would also like to mention that the top toolbar in MSFS 2024 is not read at all by the built-in Narrator screen reader. In MSFS 2020, Narrator would read the toolbar buttons when hovering over them with the mouse, but this functionality appears to be missing in 2024.
I strongly agree that these issues, especially those affecting profile switching and control-specific settings, should be treated as a high priority. Addressing them would make a huge difference in usability and accessibility.
Thank you again to the team for the progress made so far, and I really hope these remaining barriers can be resolved soon.

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Thank you for the bug report.

We have created an internal ticket to see if our team already has this logged, and if not they will attempt to reproduce the issue and create a new bug report. This item is now marked as feedback-logged. If there is an existing bug report or one is created, we will move this thread to bug-logged.

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Thanks Chewwy for your kind response and for passing my feedback along to the right team, super greatly appreciated!

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Of course, happy to help! :smiley:

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