Why Game Accessibility Matters

In the past few years, you may have increasingly bumped into accessibility settings in games. Have you ever fiddled with the settings? Or have you passed them thinking that they don’t concern you? If so, you are not alone, yet misunderstood you are, that much I can say. Please, let me elaborate.

First, I will tell you shortly about the phenomenon. As games are an interactive medium, they require constant participation from the players. This interaction is built on ability assumptions on players, generating significant barriers to people who fall out of the assumed spectrum. Game accessibility aims to correct this. It is a vast umbrella term for different settings and adjustments in games that make them playable to a broader audience. Often, the broader audience means people with varying impairments, for instance, blind or low vision communities or motor impairments. Accessibility settings vary from color-blind modes and remapping buttons to altering core gameplay mechanics, and from minor assistive controller add-ons to deeply customized controllers (Xbox Adaptive Controller, QuadStick). The core idea of game accessibility is to make all games available for everyone, regardless of the games’ complexity or the players’ abilities.

Why is game accessibility important? Because there are tons of people who benefit from it – or are excluded from games without it. If I drop numbers, according to Cairns et al. (2019), there are potentially 46.3 million players with disabilities in the US alone who could benefit from accessibility. Furthermore, people with disabilities have rather reduced possibilities for jobs, hobbies and activities, thanks to society’s restricting structures. Hence, games can be one of the few activities that people with impairments can even participate in. What’s even better, according to research, is that in virtual worlds, players with disabilities can experience genuine autonomy and equality, which is not possible in real life – provided that the accessibility is sufficient (Cairns et al., 2019). Moreover, we have a massive waste of talent and potential masterminds of passionate disabled players due to accessibility issues, both virtual and physical via participation requirements and employee assumptions of game studios.

Why should accessibility matter to you? I often want to point out that we all grow old, and with aging usually comes a fair share of physical issues. Thus, even if you do not fall into the “intended” focus group currently, you are very likely to become part of it in the future. But the best thing about accessibility is that it is actually meant for ALL – yes, even you! As a nice phrase goes by Vivek Gohil, “With great accessibility comes great inclusivity.” If you get stuck on an annoying game mechanic, frustrating part or challenging boss, it is more than recommended to utilize the accessibility options to overcome the obstacle. In fact, after Remedy Entertainment implemented the highly touted Assist Mode in Control that lets players customize the game, damage multipliers, etc., one-third of all console players used the mode in one way or another.

At this point, you might think, if it’s so beneficial and good for everyone, why are we even discussing this? Shouldn’t all developers embrace accessibility? Most definitely, they should, but significant, even decent accessibility options are few and far between. The reason for that is a conglomeration of multiple things. Proper accessibility requires solid user testing with the correct focus groups, a task that requires time and resources, a luxury that busy game studios never have. Furthermore, there’s this odd idea about accessibility options contradicting the vision of game designers – hence, the lack of accessibility or difficulty settings in From Software games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne). Moreover, there’s still in this day and age a powerful notion of hardcore macho gamers and a ‘get good’ mentality; if you don’t have the skill to play, you should stop playing altogether. It’s nothing more than a loud minority of insecure players gatekeeping others from enjoying games. Unfortunately, they’ve been successful in stigmatizing accessibility a bit, giving it a negative connotation.

Accessibility is a design practice that all developers should wield as it makes games playable for everyone. Most importantly, accessibility is optional, so you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. Just know that it should be an option if you ever need it.

Featured image from PixaBay.
Xbox Adaptive Controller from Wikimedia Commons uploaded by Geni: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xbox_Adaptive_Controller_V%26A.JPG
Control Assist Mode picture taken by the author.

You might also like

---

More from Features

---