Popular Accessibility Settings in Digital Games: What accessibility settings do players with disabilities use and need?

Popular Accessibility Settings in Digital Games: What accessibility settings do players with disabilities use and need?

Popular Accessibility Settings in Digital Games: What accessibility settings do players with disabilities use and need?

By Pauliina Baltzar, Markku Turunen, Lobna Hassan

Abstract

"This study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. What accessibility settings do people with disabilities use in digital games? and 2. What accessibility settings would make games more accessible for players with disabilities? The questions are answered by using survey data focusing on playing digital games as a disabled person, in total 93 answers were analyzed. The findings suggests that people with disabilities use different accessibility settings which are mostly centered around controlling the game, language, gameplay, visuals, audio, and adaptive devices. Yet, these same options are mentioned as also wished for settings to improve game accessibility. These findings suggest that already existing accessibility settings are useful and should be added to all games to make them more accessible, and that the lack of game accessibility experienced is not necessarily due to lack of knowhow on how to implement accessibility but the lack of commitment in implementing it in mainstream games that it remains a wish."

Reference

Baltzar, P., Turunen, M., & Hassan, L. (2022, November). Popular accessibility settings in digital games: what accessibility settings do players with disabilities use and need?. In Proceedings of the 25th International Academic Mindtrek Conference (pp. 359-363). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3569219.3569335

Keywords

games, people, disabilities