[games_access] Game Accessibility; the numbers

[Thomas Westin]

great stats Eelke, this really helps defining the field

/Thomas

On 11 jun 2008, at 23.06, Eelke Folmer wrote:

> 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
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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