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Video Game Accessibility

January 11th, 2010 by Steve | 2 Comments | Filed in Accessibility News, Video Games

I normally focus on web site accessibility, but after one of my favorite video games of 2009 recently won an award for its consideration to disabled players, it got me thinking about the subject.

First off, kudos to Dragon Age: Origins from Bioware (easily my favorite game maker) for earning 2009 Accessible Game of Year, from the web site Ablegamers.com. The roleplaying epic scored a 9.8 out of 10.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that despite web accessibility and video games being two of my greatest interests, I hadn’t really given the concept of the two together much thought.

Without having done a lot of research on the subject (yet!), my initial hunch is that a lot of game developers probably don’t pay a lot attention to disabled gamers. I hope that’s an unfair assumption.

Some may say, “How can you make a computer or video game accessible for everybody? There are just some things you can’t do if you have a disability.” Some games more than others can’t be made universally usable.

But as I think about it, there are more than just subtitles that can make games easier to use for those with sight, hearing or physical limitations. And like web surfing, there’s no doubt a vast range of disabled people who love playing computer and video games. If something happened to my sight, hearing or dexterity, my love for games wouldn’t wane.

Some things that come to mind that are similar between web browsing and game playing:

  • Controller and keyboard flexibility – just as its important to make a web site navigable by those using keyboards, finding an optimum way to make game controls not overly complex makes it easier for those with physical or some cognitive limitations to play.
  • Color contrasts and font sizing – making text larger and easier to read where possible or ensuring that there aren’t poorly-contrasted color combinations onscreen are a couple things that benefit visually-impaired gamers, be it difficulty seeing or color blindness.
  • Texting/messaging alternatives for online speech – playing games online with friends (or enemies!) is hugely popular, complete with headsets that enable gamers to chat and smack talk back and forth. Providing a means to send text messages gives those gamers with hearing limitations a way to take part in the banter.

    • In short, while you cannot make all games universally playable for all people regardless of limitations, there are plenty of ways to up the accessibility. And like web accessibility, many of these features are useful even if you don’t have a disability.

    For example, I don’t have a hearing impairment, but I always play games with subtitles on. In part, I play games at night when my wife is asleep and I don’t want the noise bothering her. Also, I just plain enjoy having the text to read along with the audio.

    All I know is that Dragon Age: Origins is a phenomenal game, and they found numerous ways to address some of the issues above as well as others.

    I’m not about to change this blog to “the art of web and game accessibility”, but this is a topic that I’m going to further explore.

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