A new initiative has been launched to help developers and games studios meet the needs of gamers with disabilities.
Recent research indicates that 20% of gamers have a disability. A group of developers and expert coordinated by Ian Hamilton, have launched the games accessibility guidelines. The guide offers all game developers’ guidelines on how to better serve the needs of gamers with a range of visual, hearing, and speech, learning and motor conditions.
The guides aim is to help developers and games studios understand and avoid simple barriers that can prevent millions of gamers from fully enjoying the current generation of console, PC and mobile games. The projects aims is to improve gaming accessibility for the whole gaming community.
Ian Hamilton the coordinator of the project believes that developers are keen to work around these barriers. A number of simple solutions can be implemented to aid players. These include methods like combining colours with symbols or allowing text to disappear using a button press rather than a timer.
A number of simple but important suggestions to improve accessibility in games include features such as configurable controls, choice of difficulty, clear text formatting and visual cues for audio information. Many of these features would be relevantly simple for developers to include during early stages of game development. Accessibility features are generally part of good game design to benefit all videogame players.
Recent research by PopCap indicates that over 20% of gamers are disabled. 15 % of adults have a reading age of eleven or under and almost 10% of male gamers have red-green colour blindness issues. Many more gamers may also have temporary impairments such as a broken limb or situational impairments. These disabilities may make playing certain videogames more difficult for the player.
Ian Hamilton, the guide coordinator and a leading accessibility specialist spoke about the initiative stating:
“Studios and publishers often don't realise the huge number of gamers who struggle with existing games due to barriers which could be easily addressed as part of the development process.”…” Often all they need to make their games more inclusive is just a bit of information to start from, and gamesaccessibilityguides.com hopes to provide this.”
The games accessibility guidelines have gathered information from groups of studios, accessibility experts, and academics including Headstrong Games, Aardman Digital, OneSwitch and Stockholm University.
The guide have stated that they have spoken to videogame developers around the world, from small Indie groups to large triple-A studios, and reported that support has been overwhelmingly positive. They have reported that several different games are in development which are using the guidelines in order to deliver the best gaming experience to as many people as possible.
One game development company have already used the guidelines in their game development. Polish company Vivid Games sought Ian Hamilton’s help with their recent PS3 and mobile game Speedball 2: Evolution. Speedball 2: Evolution included a special mode for colour blind gamers which changed the palette and increased the contrast to ensure on-screen action was still visible. President of Vivid Games; Remi Koscielny spoke about the initiative reporting that:
“For the PC version we wanted to increase the accessibility of the game, so we worked closely with Ian to ensure that every part of the game was optimised for impaired gamers.”… “Having learnt what a major difference can be made to so many people with just a little extra effort, we certainly hope that all developers take on board the fantastic work that Ian has done.”
The game accessibility guidelines is an open and free resource for anyone involved in the games industry around the world to use.
For more information on the initiative visit: www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
