In class, we discussed accessibility in video games. This semester, I am also taking a computer science class that focuses on human-computer interaction and the user experience, where we discuss accessibility a lot in terms of user interfaces, and had several lectures focused on making interfaces accessible to people who have disabilities. As a result, I found this week’s discussion on accessibility very interesting because a lot of things that were discussed this week I have experienced in the other class.

During our discussion of accessibility, we discussed the point that people with disabilities can be “invisible” to others, and that developers may design games and gaming consoles without having disabled people in mind. I experienced this problem in the other class, where there is a semester-long group project to design a website. During development, I made the mistake of sometimes displaying messages as red text on top of a green background, and I did not realize that this would make the text hard to read for colorblind users until someone in my group, who was colorblind, pointed it out. When I look back, I feel like I could also just as easily have made this mistake while developing a game. I think this goes to show that playtesting and including disabled people in playtests is very important to make sure that your game does not exclude people based on their disabilities, because many times we do not take into consideration struggles that others may have simply because we do not have those same struggles.

However, one key thing this discussion differs from my other class is the idea that not all games have to be completely accessible. Sometimes a game is trying to get a theme or message across that may require the game to exclude some accessibility features. One example is the game, Blindscape, that we played in class. This game allows the player to play through the experience of a blind person, such as triggering interactions through sounds and the feeling of anxiety of not knowing one’s surroundings. This game would not be 100% accessible to a deaf person because one of the themes of the game is to show how a blind person relies heavily on auditory cues. However, I think maybe for a deaf person, a game premise such as this could be expanded upon to include vibrations as part of the experience, as touch is a sense both blind and deaf people rely on.

Sources:

Brown, Gavin. “Blindscape.”

Michigan State University, “Accessibility and Gaming.” Accessible Learning Conference.