Accessibility for Gamers With Disabilities

Update: 08/25/2014

I've been meaning to write this since roughly mid-September, 2013 due to the fear of reprisal I haven't. Which I have seen occur on this forum when the topic of accessibility comes up from time to time. As a gamer with a disability this is bearing my soul in front of everyone. Accessibility means the difference from being able to play or not at all. Imagine not being able to play your favorite RTS because you do not have the adequate time required to carry out your plan or every time you play have to relearn skills due to your memory. First example could be resolved by getting the player adequate amount of time by having game settings. (e.g. easy, normal, etc.) Second example could be resolved by having a tutorial mode so that the person can practice which would make it easier to remember. Even better than a simple tutorial would be a contextual tutorial where the person slowly gets concepts taught them. We already have a game mode where this could be done which is galactic war (GW). With some slight modifications to it would work. One of the things that would have to be done is GW would need to be more tolerant of failures in order to facilitate the learning process. Another thing would be the ability to practice skills. When the conceptual tutorial is going on have it be dubbed or allow the use of text-to-speech software such as TextHelp. Accessibility features range from remarkable key bindings, dyslexic friendly fonts to skip mechanism and beyond. It really depends on the type of disability and the kind of game that is being played or developed. So accessibility is about allowing people who have disabilities play the game. It is not about hamstringing gameplay. It is their for the greater good of the whole so everybody can play. Hopefully the relationship between Uber and able gamers is a fruitful one. I leave with some resources at the bottom.

Game Accessibility Guidelines
These are two different guidelines but they should be used in tandem. They are great resources.
includification.com
gameaccessibilityguidelines.com

Some Articles About Disabled Gamers
http://www.wired.com/2011/07/accessible-games/
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...ssibility-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters.aspx/
http://www.popmatters.com/post/153338-mass-appeal-vs.-accessibility/
http://therealkatie.net/blog/tags/508/ - this blog has some really good ideas about accessibility for disabled gamers.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/129843/designing_usable_and_accessible_.php?print=1 <- Update
game-accessibility.com - general information about disabled gamers and the types of disability as well as other resources.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020377/Accessibility-Lessons-Learned-from-Designing <- Update 1
http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/8/6/5886035/disabled-gamers-accessibility <- Update 2

I support everything said in this post. Everything.

I do as well, but I'd like to see a finished game, or at least a v1.0 before we focus on this stuff. :/

A lot of those things listed are possible to do through mods. It's not as good as native support but we as a community can create a working example of an accessible ui to help get the discussion started and show Uber a prototype of what is needed. Unfortunately the ui code is still changing too often for many serious ui mods to remain stable after updates, but once the pace slows down we should come back to this.

Thank you for the input and thoughtfulness. This feedback went to the entire studio.

I'd be willing to dub the entirety of this "tutorial" for free.

Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment.

Thank you. I appreciate it. On the subject of timeline the assumption was a sometime after release. due to how close it seems to be. Also PA will never have a finished game because development will continue on it.

I was thinking about this a few months ago and came to the same conclusion as you the modding infrastructure is too much in flux right now to do something like this. Coming back later would probably be the better idea. Thank you for caring.

You're welcome so much.

Thank you is much appreciated.

Yup totally agree, you rock @lokiCML. Very brave of you dude! Good on you for putting this stuff out there for people to see and think about. Simple things that we take for granted like fonts and the like might be make or break for someone else!

Cheers,

-Todd

Ya I agree, at the very least a mod supporting these sorts of issues should be worked on once things like the UI are more stabilized from release.

You are your own best advocate. For people who aren't able to advocate for themselves we must do it on their by half. I really appreciate your words of encouragement. Thank you.

So how is this coming along?