[games_access] Information please: Game Designers with Disabilities.

Thu May 8 18:23:20 EDT 2014

Absolutely agree with everything below, particularly the audyssey mailing list, there are a decent number of blind game devs on there, and if you're talking about online resources I'd imagine that there would be a strong focus on vision impairment and screen-reader support.
Bottom line is that, like gaming itself, if people are passionate about making games they'll take whatever avenue they can to do so, even if their impairment seems to be one that would exclude them from a particular role - even yesterday I was speaking to someone from a large studio who's art director is fully deuteranopic colourblind.

Dan brought up a nice point at the GDC meeting about Unity, a feature that wasn't included in any way for accessibility but that actually opens up use of the engine to many more people - the ability to switch the editor to different skins, with different levels of glare/contrast.
Ian
Date: Thu, 8 May 2014 17:32:01 -0400
From: blindwolf8 at gmail.com
To: games_access at igda.org
Subject: Re: [games_access] Information please: Game Designers with	Disabilities.

Hi Raymond,Just wanted to chime in and agree with others: There are game developers with disabilities. I myself am legally blind, which means I have some sight. If you'd like to chat off-list, feel free to email me (unsure if the list will show my full email) and/or call me at the number below.

Thanks Raymond!Dan Fischbach, Net+, MCP
W: danfischbach.com P: 609-458-7920
Proud NJIT (BS) and UCF/FIEA (MS) graduate

Please consider the environment before printing this email

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Franco Eusébio Garcia <franco.garcia at dc.ufscar.br> wrote:

Hello, Ray,

I'll try complementing Eleanor's answer here.

> I now know there are game designers with disabilities.

There really are game designers with disabilities. It might be hard to search using a general term; however, it is possible to find some of them by narrowing your search to specific disabilities.

Should you need some more references, I have a few you might find useful:

[1] <http://n4g.com/news/648398/blind-video-game-programmer-from-puerto-rico-shocks-the-industry-live-footage>

[2] <http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/22/screenreader-enables-blind-programmer-to-succeed-on-the-app-store-exclusive/>

[3] <http://www.pcsgames.net/dialogue.htm>

[4] <http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/149350-Disabled-Game-Developer-Is-there-room-for-disabled-devs-in-the-game-industry>

[5] <http://xboxforums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/16574/87443.aspx>

If you are not focusing on digital games only, looking for board game designers could also be a good idea.

The following are not gaming related, although it could also be interesting:

[5] <http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~ladner/hahnexperiences.html>

[6] <http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/22/177452578/young-adults-with-autism-can-thrive-in-high-tech-jobs>

Another interesting reference could be Sonar, a project aiming to create an accessible Linux distribution.

[7] <http://sonargnulinux.com/>

[8] <https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sonar-project>

I do not know if it has programming facilities for developers with disabilities; however, command line interfaces tend to be more accessible. At least one of the developers of the project is blind, so there might be.

> So, my second question is what sorts of technology do those designers use -- and I realize there are many different disabilities, so there's not a single tool used?

You are indeed right - the tools will vary depending on the disability. They will also vary depending on the complexity and genre of the game.

The ideal tool would be an accessible game editor - however, unfortunately, there are not too many options. An interesting one is Adventure Game Engine [9].

Other than BGS mentioned by Eleanor, there is/was also Blindstation. Another interesting one could be PlayFic [10], an online site that eases the creation of text-based adventure games.

[9] <http://blindaudiogames.com/>

[10] <http://playfic.com/>

As for programming itself, many of the tools for programmers with disabilities are assistive technologies - many of them are the very same assistive technologies used to interact with the computer. Once again, most of my references are regarding visual impairments. Unfortnately, there are not game specific; however, I hope you find some of it useful.

To cite a few:

a) For visually impaired programmers some include screen readers, braille displays, text to speech converters and screen magnification. The links should provide further alternatives:

[11] <https://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-program-if-youre-blind>

Jaime Sánchez's Audio Programming Language explores another approach. It might be worth checking.

[12] http://www.captura.uchile.cl/bitstream/handle/2250/6218/Sanchez_Jaime_APL.pdf?sequence=1

b) For motor impaired programmers, an option is on-screen keyboards and voice input (also useful for visually impaired).

c) For color blind programmers, many editors or IDEs provide the option to change syntax highlighting options.

Other than the languages outlined by Eleanor, Lua and Ruby are also popular languages. The syntax of Lua, for instance, is mostly textual, which eases the usage of assistive technologies (even commands are text - for instance, the 'and' operator is 'and' instead of '&&' in languages such as Java and C++). From the Lua website [13]:

"As a blind programmer, I really enjoy the Lua scripting language. It is one of the most speech friendly languages to read and write with a screen reader. Lua is also very fast, light and portable."

[13] http://www.lua.org/quotes.html

Should you have a specific disability in mind, pleask ask. I might have a more specific reference to share.

Best regards,

Franco

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