DigiPlay 3: Leisure Constraints, Entitlement and Access to Technologies of Leisure

Greenbank Building,
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Weds 15th Sept 2004

Overview of the conclusions of the IGDA Games Accessibility White paper

Thomas Westin
IGDA Games Accessibility Special Interest Group/Pin Interactive
thomas@pininteractive.com

More than 40 years has passed since the first computer games were developed (e.g Spacewar from 1962). Yet you still have the same implied prerequisites to play a game, i.e. full sight, non-impaired hearing, cognitive and motoric functions. In short the game industry excludes many (or most) disabled, potential gamers.

There are small companies and individuals who develop games for disabled. These games break new ground in interface design using unconventional means of input/output but they tend not to attract the mass market. The scope of these special games are a fraction of the scope of mainstream titles, where budget is perhaps the most important factor. This has also been the case of an accessible 3D graphic game I've developed, Terraformers

The problems of making games accessible are many. Research, development and governmental funding is needed to make it happen on a broader scale. One reason that make games especially hard to make accessible, is the fact that games use special development tools and APIs which don't work well, or at all, with standard accessibility tools like screen readers etc. Also many games are designed to challenge the gamer physically and/or mentally (with parameters like speed and precision, quests and puzzles), which runs counter to accessibility aims.

I feel confident that virtually any game can be made accessible for any disability. However, I also know it is a huge task for any game developer to make games (and especially realtime 3D games) accessible, and it is almost an utopia to make games accessible for literally everyone. By
collaborating with the rest of the community I think it is possible to develop methods of making all game genres accessible for as many gamers as financially possible.

To do this, in May 2003 I took the initiative to the Game Accessibility Special Interest Group (GA-SIG) within the International Game Developers Association (IGDA, www.igda.com). We have produced a white paper on Game Accessibility which I will present. It gives an overview of the scope of the problem, what type of accessible games there are today and promising technologies for the future.

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