Episode 67 Making games visually accessible

Making games visually accessible

Hi and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. Find out more at www.universityxp.com

On today’s episode we’ll cover how to make games more visually accessible

Most people think games are just for play and entertainment. But you can also use games for teaching and learning through games-based learning, gamification, serious games, and simulations. But one of the most important things to consider when using something for teaching and learning is accessibility. Specifically, how can we make games more inclusive for the people that we are trying to reach?

Often one of the first areas we turn to when creating more inclusive games is to address the need to make them more visually accessible. That includes addressing some issues identified by players such as colorblindness and iconography. We also need to address how vision impaired players can play through the use of other senses such as touch and sound as additional forms of engagement.

This episode will review how to make more visually accessible games. This should be done to make games as accessible as possible for more people: players, learners, and student included. By making games more visually accessible we adhere to better design choices that result in the creation of better games. Visual accessibility options for players will be discussed as well as the use of interactive fiction for engaging vision impaired players.

To make games accessible, we first have to define what we mean by “accessibility.” Accessibility in game design is the level at which other people can play your game if they have extraordinary usability needs. This could start out with the cognitive level of your players often defined by their age, experience, and motor skills necessary to play the game. This also extends into sensory abilities such as touch, sound, and in this case sight.

Accessibility is important so that the game can be played by the widest possible audience. That means that any player who chooses to - and wants to - can pick up and play your game. Accessibility is the dedication to making sure that the first decision to play your game is made by the players. That decision can be made easier when your game is designed with accessibility in mind.

So what is the actual point of making a game visually “accessible?” The best reason is because games are a medium for communication. But unlike other mediums like toys, narratives, and puzzles, games are meant to be engaged with. That means that there needs to be a focus on usability in order to create interactive games.

Likewise, games that are useable are able to reach a wider audience.

A wider audience often has very different and differentiated accessibility needs. As such, making sure that your games are visually accessible helps address the needs of a wider population.  An estimated 10 to 20% of potential players already don’t play video games because of a disability. Making sure that your games are applicable and approachable for them gets new players playing your game.

Lastly, making visually accessible games means that your players are in the position to reclaim the gaming experience and make it their own. By doing so, they can customize the experience based on their individual and specific needs.  This gives players agency in the game selection and decision process.

Accessible games are usable for the widest possible audience.  Accessible games are also influenced by design choices that make better experiences for everyone.

In fact, the very design choices that make great games approachable and fun to play are the same choices that make your game more accessible for a wider audience. These visual accessibility commitments make it so that a game is designed, tested, and built from the ground up with accommodations for gamers that require them.

Sometimes those design choices could just include small tweaks: such as avoid relying on color alone to share and convey information with players. Likewise, it could include other practices such as including language independent design when creating common game assets like iconography and other graphic design considerations.

Ideally, these visually accessible design choices make it so that a great game can shine for an equally great range of players to play together.

There are several different accessibility options for designers based on the medium their game was designed in. For most digital game development, text-to-speech makes the most sense. This creates an interface where visually impaired players can still explore a digital space.  This can be accomplished through 3d sound design, visual cues, and other techniques used to create a space for the player to traverse in the absence of their full use of sight.

Likewise, players with limited sight options can even take advantage of fully text based games. Such text based games give players the ability to use screen readers to read and interact with text. This provides both players and designers advantages in both accessibility and creative design spaces were text serves as the primary medium for interaction within the game.

Table top games represent different challenges where players can rely on both sight and touch to differentiate game components from one another.  Table top games rely on touch as a critical form of interaction. Unfortunately, poor design choices lead to the creation of components that are not well designed for players with limited mobility or sight. As such, players with limited visual accessibility have a difficult time reading small print, inconsistent placement of symbols, or non-standard game components: such as custom printed dice.

Aside from a complete lack of sight, many sighted players with vision issues suffer from color blindness. This problem is exacerbated when game designers only use pallets of colors to differentiate between information and components in their design.

Of course color is a great way to identify different formal elements of games. However, color alone makes these games inaccessible for players with different and various levels of color blindness. The best way to address this is for designers to first identify where color is being used to convey information in the game and then addressing how that information could be conveyed through other mediums. Those mediums could include iconography, text, textures, and touch to differentiate between different information.

Sometimes colors are central to the element of the game design. In that case, it’s wise to create games with color-blind modes for players to use where the colors chosen are provided with different and varied levels of contrast and hue so that players with different levels of colorblindness can tell components apart.  Taking this one step further, designers could also allow players to choose how colors are used in the game and how to choose colors for some of the most critical components.

Of course visuals and colors are often used in games to identify different components. However, touch can also be used as a medium to inform the player experience.

This is often an area that doesn’t get much traction we many players prioritize their sense of sight over other things. Despite this, the reality is that people with visual impairments interact with games in various different ways. Touch is a medium in which that interaction occurs.

A great example of a table top game that integrates the sense of touch is Nyctophobia. The game’s formal elements and structure makes it so that touch becomes the primary medium - over sight - for how players play the game. In this way, touch becomes a focused medium rather than an accommodation for game play.

Likewise, digital games can make best use of touch through features such as haptics. Haptics provide added realism and different opportunities for sensory perception in games as players’ use of touch influences and informs other senses. Haptics can be used in player responses by proving precision physical feedback to better represent what is happening in the game.

Original haptic features provided an opportunity for players to “feel something” that was happening in a digital game. However, technology has progressed to the point where haptics can be used to convey subtle and delicate interactions within game environments alongside large and explosive ones.

Many digital games already include audio as a medium that influences the player experience. However, there are also opportunities to use audio as a medium to create a gaming experience that prominently caters to those with limited vision.

Audio based games can be a featured medium where entire game worlds are created with just sound. Just like how Nyctophobia prioritized touch for visually impaired players; sound can likewise be used to as a means to cater directly to them.

A dedication to only the audio medium isn’t completely necessary. Existing games can use audio to better cater to visually impaired players by providing ways for gamers to interact via audio and voice response through their interaction with the game world.

Voice recognition can already be used to serve basic functions in a user interface.  The ability to go a little bit further into games is possible and accessible for visually impaired players.  One such game that took this extra step without prompt was the Grand-Theft Auto series as the advanced sound engine as well as the open structure of the game made it particularly accessible for visually impaired gamers.

Audio can be used as a medium for visually impaired players to access and play games. Because of that, interactive fiction has become a new medium where players interact with game environments.  Interactive fiction is a genre of games where the exchange between the game and players is done via text.  Text makes the game accessible to players using screen readers. Likewise, accessibility tools make text based input more approaching and accessible to players with impairments.

I first experienced interactive text based adventures with Dragon Realms which is a role-playing game setup specifically through a text interface. Likewise, platforms like Twine make it so that text based narrative games can be created quickly and easily.

These types of interactive fiction games makes text descriptions of the things that players can “see,” do, and interact with in the game world. As such, players must rely on their own imaginations to fully construct the game world.  Interactions between them and other players rely on text as a primary medium for communication – rather than just a secondary one like current in-game chats.

This episode reviewed how to make more visually accessible games. This should be done to make games as accessible for more people: players, learners, and student included. By making games more visually accessible we adhere to better design choices that end with creating greater games. Visual accessibility options for players were discussed as well as the use of interactive fiction for engaging vision impaired players.

I hope you found this episode useful. If you’d like to learn more, then a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining me!

Again, I’m your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP. On Experience Points we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you liked this episode please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing.

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References

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