Home Forums General Discussion Accessibility in games

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    • #3327
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #13390
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I forgot to link to the IGDA PDF:

      http://www.igda.org/accessibility/IGDA_Accessibility_WhitePaper.pdf

      I know a publisher would view it as; How many of the disabled community would be interested in playing games (say if they were 100% user friendly).

      “In Sweden for instance, two sources say 20 percent of the working population (16 to 64 years old) have a disability or limiting condition.A third source say 10 percent of the total population are disabled. Sweden has a population of 9 million people.”

      Meh – a lot to yack on about…

    • #13399
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      It is an interesting area, but in some cases implimenting new features to accomodate “disabled” players is simply too exspensive, and seen as a sales risk to publishers….But let’s be honest KyotoKid you’ve pionted out several features which need to be addressed, not even the film industry has evolved that far yet, still accomodating only mute hard of sight and hearing impairments.

      Also there was a few interesting points you made towards the complexity of the game design, Puzzles ect. Do you suggest developers include different builds of the same game to suit several levels of player intelligence?, if so do you not think this would leed to astronomical development times?, it’s a fair point but one I can’t see being addressed for a good while, the only thing remotly similar in to-days games is the standard difficulty level option, although we all know this usually only results in lesser foes on the screen in lower difficulty levels.

      Other problems you have sited such as lack of understanding towards the game, and unknowing how to progress through the game is all down to bad game design on the developers behalf, such tutorials should always be present and Game design should be logical although this is not always the case.

      The only for-seeable “fix” in the future is “catergorisation”, a slew of products aimed at different demograhics within the disabled community, products for all the major defects such as hearing/sight/vision ect…. But this is all debatable, someone is bound to have a more practable solution, hopfully it could include everyone.

      nice topic

    • #13405
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I was thinking about how you would go about making a game for the blind. This is just a quick idea – probably waaaay behind the times in relation to ‘proper games’ for the blind – need to do some research.

      Simplistic example follows….

      This is using ‘normal’ environment sounds as opposed to spoken directions (e.g. “Here is a jump”)

      Crash Bandicoot type game:

      In the picture the player would walk across the brown area (“1”). They would receive audio feedback – in this case the sound of walking on wooden planks.

      >>The player would feel out the dimensions of the section.
      >>They orientate themselves to find the end point (yellow) by listening for the sound of walking on metal.

      The player knows that metal indicates a ‘jump point’. (yellow)
      >>The player hits ‘jump’ on their control and they land on the first island

      On the island there are two possible ‘jump points’ (yellow) (“2”)
      The player can go back the way they came or jump onto the next island (“3”)

      >>If the player faces towards “1” they hear the wind blowing strongly.
      It is established that is is the way they came – their directions in a cutscene were to “Follow the wind to the ancient city” (or whatever). This helps orientate them – they know left is back, and right is progression.

      The player listens for the sound of metal (yellow) which indicates a ‘jump point’
      >>Player jumps to next island and continues onto “4”.

      I’m sure real games for the blind are way better.
      (fear my art skills!)

    • #13408
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      A valiant effort

    • #13409
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      The only for-seeable “fix” in the future is “catergorisation”, a slew of products aimed at different demograhics within the disabled community, products for all the major defects such as hearing/sight/vision ect…. But this is all debatable, someone is bound to have a more practable solution, hopfully it could include everyone.[/quote:3901e072aa]

      I was thinking that too. Unless it becomes financially attractive to publishers (and therefore developers) it will be hard to get them to ‘over develop’ their games to ensure it is playable to people with disabilities.

      However smaller steps can be taken;

      -> Ensuring that all dialogues are subtitled,
      -> Puzzles\boss fights etc don’t only have audio cues
      -> Enable the renderer to have a ‘high contrast’ mode.
      -> Simplify control methods (Depending on the game)

      It would be very good PR for a game if it was say ‘deaf friendly’ or approved by a deaf association or other such organisation.

    • #13411
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      It’s an unfortunate case of limited appeal from a developers point of view, I don’t believe it’s due to laziness or discrimination,but more the lack of a current technology that can allow for all people to enjoy games,disabled or otherwise. But yet still, it’s more unfortunate for the people suffering from their illness, as it is obviously not their fault and hopefully something can be done in this industry to allow for more people from all walks of life to enjoy gaming as much as you and I. Afterall everyone deserves the chance to sample the delights of Mario and Link….at least once in their life.

    • #13412
      Anonymous
      Inactive
    • #13414
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Brainwave:
      Shooting in the dark here! But wouldn’t it be interesting if the game had sections that had to be played without the use of sight by all users? Meaning a fully sighted person sees only a dark screen and must solely depend on their hearing also It may even help others to understand the disability a little better, by experiencing it [/quote:9bbdd8d688]

      I would love to do this!!

      (Adding the motion detector sound from ‘aliens’ would scare the crap out of people)

    • #13416
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      *thinks back and remembers trying to play Doom on his Game Boy Adance*

      The above “shooting in the Dark” catch phrase never apllied more.

    • #13417
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      (Adding the motion detector sound from ‘aliens’ would scare the crap out of people)[/quote:4ff0f7c7d1]

      Cooool…that would rock!

      This kind of thing is potentially a very, very nice way for an independent developer to make a name for themselves in the industry with all the positive publicity a project like this would generate an all ;)

      Copyright 2004 Ian Hannigan ;)

    • #13419
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      Darkness…….bleeping sounds….aliens…..sounds like a walk home after a night on the piss to me……..

      “stow that belly aching soldier, remember your a leatherneck”

    • #13424
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      if i can remember right, i think Warp, that made D, D2, Enemy Zero, made a game for the blind which did feature a motion detector type thing. this was way back in about 96-98 sort of time…. i think

      it was in japan, and i don’t think it was released publicly.

      btw Warp have now closed down

      edit: i might be getting mixed up, cause i know Enemy Zero had invisable enemies which u had use a motion detector to find them….. dam only 21 and already my memories are all mixing up!
      :confused:

    • #13426
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I think Alien versus Predator had it too ;)

    • #13428
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      aliens vs predator (1 & 2) has the motion detector.

      its something you really depend on when your the marine, the levels are so dark (even if you turn the game gamme up full,and the windows desktop gamma up full – yes, i tried :o :D )

      so yes it scares the crap out of you.
      and its funny cause its the thing you concentrate the most on.

      back to making games for disabled people –
      it’d be near impossible to make a single game which was accessible & playable by all, you’d be talking about making different games which coped/dealt with different levels of disability.

    • #13430
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      …it’d be near impossible to make a single game which was accessible & playable by all, you’d be talking about making different games which coped/dealt with different levels of disability. [/quote:4008cd92d7]

      I agree, if it was your sole intent to make games that where targeted at the disabled community you still would be very difficult to make them acessible to all.

      Still I would like to try – if any government ministers are reading this – email me. We’ll talk. Lets do brunch. :)

    • #13434
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I thought about making a game that was entirely set in the dark once. One of the cool things I considered was that you wouldn’t have to worry about devoting huge amounts of time, effort and money to graphics. Although providing screenshots may be a problem.

    • #13436
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I thought about making a game that was entirely set in the dark once. One of the cool things I considered was that you wouldn’t have to worry about devoting huge amounts of time, effort and money to graphics. Although providing screenshots may be a problem. [/quote:ad4ddadba6]

      An interesting observation while posting here is that the main focus seems to be on people with visual disabilities.

    • #13437
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      It is maybe because it is the biggest challenge?

      (sorry for brevity, me hungover)

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