Mask over his eyes, a controller in one hand, his Braille keyboard in front of him: for Sven, known on Twitch as “BlindWarriorSven”, hosting a stream on Twitch or even playing “Street Fighter V” blindly seems to be child's play.
"I put a blindfold over my eyes because I'm sometimes accused of not being really blind," he smiles, referring to a few sore losers knocked out in clashes on Capcom's famous game, during live games.
Blind since he was 6 years old after cancer, Sven, addicted to video games before his illness, has never given up his passion for gaming.
Relying solely on the sound effects of the game, Sven found the solution to his handicap.
He is thus able to locate the characters on the screen and describe their actions.
“The only thing I have are the audio cues the game gives me.
And thanks to this information, I am able to know if I am on the left, if I am on the right, what my opponent is doing, how I should attack him, how I should defend myself, ”explains the IT engineer.
By dint of training, Sven has managed to rank among the best in the Super Diamond League, one of the highest categories of "Street Fighter".
A weekly meeting
In 2017, he even launched on the Twitch platform to share his passion with as many people as possible. Another big challenge. “I manage my Twitch channel through my PC. I have a desktop computer as well as a laptop. On each of these computers, I connected a braille keyboard. The Braille keyboard is a device that allows blind people to read text on the screen. If someone writes to me in the chat, I can read it with this Braille keyboard, ”Sven explains. A complex interface that he has nevertheless learned to master over the years, at the frantic pace imposed on him by live broadcasting. "The hardest part for me is keeping an eye on the chat window, especially when there are a lot of people writing messages, while staying focused on the game."
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Every Sunday, he therefore meets his subscribers on his channel and engages in fights with them, commenting and analyzing each movement of his opponent.
“I win about eight times out of ten,” he says with a smirk.
This does not prevent him from sometimes venturing onto other games, even if he regrets that still too few titles do not have sufficient accessibility options for disabled players.
3,000 Twitch subscribers
His channel has just passed the 3000 subscriber mark and displays between 40 and 50 viewers per broadcast. A more than honorable score on a platform where people with disabilities remain barely visible. In order to shed more light on certain communities and be more inclusive, Twitch added some 350 keywords in May 2021 to better identify certain categories, in particular people with disabilities. But these profiles remain rare. For Sven, improvements are also possible in terms of accessibility, such as "the possibility of having only text in the chat window", the reading of emoticons tending to disturb his braille keyboard.
As a streamer on Twitch, Sven is paid based on the number of subscribers to his channel and their donations. If he only receives a few tens of euros per month for the moment, he hopes to one day achieve the status of "partner", which could eventually allow him to provide him with sufficient income to make it his job. “If I had given up, if I had given up video games because of my disability, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I think if I get there, I'm sure other people can do it too, ”he concludes.