[MoriMoonpaw]

Hi everyone!

Noticed today is Superhuman Day, which is about people with disabilities and their persistence in navigating this tough world, and it made me think of games and the accessibility and inclusivity challenges, there's been some buzz around it recently, e.g. in form of updates coming out of gamescom (see about Naughty Dog here for example).

There was a study from a couple of years ago with some interesting statistics and information about some of the challenges faced in gaming at the moment (this was in the UK). Ranging from the cost of suitable assistive or adapted technology, poor accessibility, negative attitudes from other gamers (something we have a zero tolerance for on this community btw) related to disabilities, impairments or conditions.

Some accessibility features in games currently include settings to adjust mouse sensitivity, sound, subtitle and captions, and display options including colour and contrast. Hardware solutions include things like adjusting button sensitivity, one-hand game controllers, head, mouth or feet operated controllers, haptic feedback etc. There are also software-related solutions such as text-to-speech, visual keyboard, magnifiers, screen readers. These are just a few examples.

Of course the improvements, in addition to the tech side of things, also include changing attitudes and how we treat each other in the gaming world.

There have been some positive developments in recent years but things are still a long way off from ideal. Do you have any thoughts on what you'd especially like to see changing in this space?

[DoctorEldritch]

I like technological solutions in recent years, though, as you noted, there is still a long way to go. But what I'd want to see more is for video games to include and represent more characters with disabilities and start conversations about it.

After I read this post, I tried to remember any characters that I know from the video games, but all I could come up with is Jeff “Joker” Moreau from the Mass Effect trilogy and his Vrolik syndrome. I think we could use more good characters like that.

[M2lobaz]

@MoriMoonpaw you know a Youtuber named JackFrags... last couple years he ran a campaign of donations for a charitable organization that's dedicated to develop tools and gears to help people with disabilities play games easily...
that campaign done great because his fans, followers, subscribers and channel members just cracked the donations limit in a short time..they were really positive in that case.. so good luck to whoever tries to help.

[DoctorEldritch]

I was thinking over the weekend about representation again, but in cartoons rather than games, and I remembered a very nice cartoon around hearing accessibility (not just in games, though) that came out on Apple+ earlier this year, El Deafo! It is a very nice little series, I made a post about it, check it out!

[MoriMoonpaw]

@M2lobaz Thanks for your reply! That sounds interesting and super positive! 👏 Is this a Youtuber that you regularly follow? 😊

I'd love to hear about other similar campaigns if anyone else has noticed (or been part of) any? 😊
@DoctorEldritch Thanks for sharing! 👍 I actually have Apple TV+ although only the basic one, it came with my mobile contract. Might check out this show. :)

[M2lobaz]

Originally Posted by MoriMoonpaw

@M2lobaz Thanks for your reply! That sounds interesting and super positive! 👏 Is this a Youtuber that you regularly follow? 😊

yep..for at least 4 years now

[Saka]

Sometimes the developers make mechanics in the games unintentionally hard by using some colour combinations that are okay for people with normal sight, but really bad for those with colour blindness. Altering the colours is still not offered in enough games & on the level that actually helps. I have normal sight, but visual clutter also bothers and distracts me a lot, so I am joining my friends with colourblindness on the rant "what he heck is this?!".

I am profoundly deaf, I can't understand any speech through speakers and even non-speech sound cues can be a huge miss. So I often play without any sound at all. Sometimes in games the biggest cue for something specific is sound only and I find that unfair. Like fishing in many games. It's not even anything competitive, why is it made so inaccessible?!

I use captions for everything. If something doesn't have captions where it matters then well, I don't play or watch it. Reminds me when a friend wanted me to play Spyro Reignited on PS4, but there didn't seem to be any way of enabling captions. Really soured my experience, even though most of the game is just running around, very little talk. But the PC version does have captions, although they look terrible (seriously, what's wrong with the font and why the black background box? there SHOULD be options for captions, so that people can choose what font they like or the size).

There is also a fairly big attitude problem too. I've gotten comments that I am "not entitled to do any content" when I made a post about some accessibility issues in m+. Funnily enough, the mechanic I complained about got nuked not that long later. So maybe it was an actual issue not just for me. I used to be a mythic raider with several Cutting Edge achievements and hm, not necessarily people could believe that I could pull it off without being a burden for my team. Consensus: people can suck.

I am a moderator in a Discord for Cochlear Implant recipients. Recently a CM of a game developer joined the community. In a conversation about difficulties with speech they confessed that they are afraid of streams, because she got some harassment over their speech impediment. Basically someone wrote all over the forums that "X sucks, speaks like they are too stupid to wrap the words around their mouth". That's really uncool. There can be many reasons for unclear speech that have nothing in common with intelligence. Not hearing oneself properly when talking is one of the reasons. There can be reasons unrelated to hearing too, such as facial paresis, being a stroke victim or such.

Oh and I also would like to bonk people whenever I get asked to hop on voice chat despite them *theoretically* being aware of my deafness. Happens quite a lot.

[Saka]

I remembered about this topic a while ago, then forgot again. When there were the Game Awards, Got of War: Ragnarok won for innovative accessibility.

This article tells a bit about them: https://www.polygon.com/god-of-war-r...igation-assist , but in a nutshell there are lots of options to compensate for vision, hearing and reaction time/fine control difficulties. I found it great that the developers tried to make the game accessible for a wide audience and hope that there would be more following the trend.