[games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers

[Eelke Folmer]

Hi,

A remember a discussion a while ago (I guess it was before E for All
or GDC) when we were making flyers that we couldn't specify how many
people are unable to play games because of a disability. Anyway i'm
hoping to shed some more light on these numbers.

For an upcoming survey paper on Game Accessibility I sat down and
analyzed several statistics to come up with a more precise estimate
for the total number of people in the USA who's game playing abilities
are affected by a disability. I based these estimates primarily on
data from the American Community Survey (2002) which provides a
breakdown of each disability category into more specific categories
allowing us to more precisely identify whether that particular
disability affects someone's ability to play games. Unable to walk
does not have the same effect on being able to play games as arthritis
while both are considered a physical disability. Another problem with
trying to define estimates is that elderly are overly represented in
the total number of people with disabilities while at the same time it
is known that elderly don't play games as much as the younger
generations. The number of people in the baby boom generation is also
very large. I tried to pull this data apart based on estimates based
on some data I found on average number of people that play games and
console ownership broken down into different age categories.
Inevitably some extrapolations were made, I wish more accurate data
was available. I corresponded with the US census office briefly and
for future community surveys they told me they are considering
including ability to use computer in their questionnaires. This data
is currently not available in the 2002 survey.

The statistics can be found here: http://www.eelke.com/files/ga_stats.pdf

Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, any feedback is
appreciated.

Cheers Eelke

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Eelke Folmer Assistant Professor
Department of CS&E/171
University of Nevada Reno, Nevada 89557
Game interaction design www.eelke.com
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