[games_access] games_access Digest, Vol 101, Issue 13

[Ian Hamilton]

Despite how under fire it has often come for being vague, for my money UK accessibility law nailed it, by obliging people to make  reasonable adjustments. It's that 'reasonable' part that's important, although it can be abused it allows some flexibility and common sense for things that aren't sensible to implement.. in the case of games, things that would damage the core mechanic. 

So while a game be definition can't be barrier free (without any barriers it's just a toy or narrative rather than a game), what we can achieve is avoiding -unneccessary- barriers, and at present there are an extraordinary number of those.

What's worked very well for me in the past has been getting developers to step back from the grand vision and think about which skills their mechanic is meant to be a test of. Eg. if its a FPS then its a test of motor and visual skills, so a high level of accessibility won't be possible for those areas.. for for hearing and cognitive it should be. On the other hand, a quiz game should be able to achieve a very good level of motor and visual accessibility.


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