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With 10 to 20% of the population considered disabled in one form or another, today's main Gamasutra feature, written by IGDA SIG member Kevin Bierre, serves as a primer o...

Simon Carless, Blogger

July 6, 2005

1 Min Read

With 10 to 20% of the population considered disabled in one form or another, today's main Gamasutra feature, written by IGDA SIG member Kevin Bierre, serves as a primer on improving video game accessibility, referencing hardware and software approaches, as well as example of accessible games. In his introduction, Bierre comments: "For most gamers, the process of setting up a game and starting to play is pretty straight forward: install the game, skim over the instructions, and start playing. Unfortunately, people with disabilities find this process considerably harder. The difficulty starts at the store. A disabled purchaser has no idea if a game is accessible to them or not. There are no ratings on the box that will indicate if the game is closed captioned or supports alternative input devices. In many cases, game ratings in the popular media do not address the accessibility issue, so for many purchasers, buying a game is very much a gamble. After the game is installed, the player needs to often customize the settings to support their system and adaptive hardware. This is often not addressed in the documentation and most help desks have little experience dealing with these problems. Once in the game, further problems can occur." Bierre goes on to discuss possible solutions, and you can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).

About the Author(s)

Simon Carless

Blogger

Simon Carless is the founder of the GameDiscoverCo agency and creator of the popular GameDiscoverCo game discoverability newsletter. He consults with a number of PC/console publishers and developers, and was previously most known for his role helping to shape the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Conference for many years.

He is also an investor and advisor to UK indie game publisher No More Robots (Descenders, Hypnospace Outlaw), a previous publisher and editor-in-chief at both Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine, and sits on the board of the Video Game History Foundation.

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