A Look Into Video Game Accessibility for Players with Disabilities
Written on February 14th, 2023 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}I was inspired to write this partly after a particularly infuriating session of playing 'Marvel's Spider-Man' on PC, in which I had to fight off dozens of goons, executing well-timed attacks and takedowns while having a papercut on my playing finger. It got me thinking about how people with disabilities would manage to play a game like this. It wasn't even the toughest game I've ever played, and it still seemed a bit insane how I managed to learn all the controls of various games but can't remember what I studied the last sem. Of course, for someone with a learning disability, learning those controls would also be tough. And how would someone who was blind or had very poor vision play this game; indeed, were there any games they could play at all?
Accessibility in video games for disabled people is, surprisingly, not as overlooked as we would think. There have always existed options in games which help out regular gamers but also help out gamers with disabilities. Of course, building a video game takes a lot of time and money, and the things video game studios do to improve accessibility might not always be the best they could be or are sometimes just downright mind-boggling (looking at you, Bethesda, for whatever you did with DOOM's features for colourblind people). By accessibility in this context, we mean any feature of the game, either in the gameplay, the menus, or the game design itself, that is intended to ease the gameplay for a gamer with a certain disability. To get an idea of the existing features for accessibility across a large number of video games, and the things we can do to improve them, it's a good idea to methodically approach accessibility with respect to the disability it's targeting(and no, a papercut is not a valid disability):
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- For players who are deaf or hard of hearing:
Game audio is an essential part of a lot of video games. It adds to the atmosphere of the game, is used to transmit vital information from the game to the gamer, and invites immersion into the game world. For players with any disability related to perception of sound, it's important that the same information that the sound conveys should be conveyed to them. For instance, in the case of character dialogue, subtitles are a handy and easy-to-implement option. A lot of games have subtitles, but not all of them get it right. The subtitles should be large, with an easy-to-read font, should be short, indicate the speaker, and cover all crucial dialogue. We don't want subtitles like in God of War, where even regular players had trouble reading the tiny text. Letting player select their own preferred text size and colour is an even better option.
Certain games, like Overwatch or Minecraft, rely on audio cues to tell you whether another character is about to use their special move or whether a skeleton is approaching you from the side, for example. The audio cues, and any other important sound in the soundscape, should be covered by close-captions (a feature Minecraft implements) or use visual cues such as arrows or colour to signal important information.
Music playing in the background can also be distracting for players who are hard of hearing, so options to increase the volume of speech while decreasing the volume of music and other VFX are also good options. - For players who are colourblind or have low vision:
Again, for players with low vision, having clear and easy-to-read fonts is essential. For all their faults, the Assassin's Creed games get the subtitled stuff right.
Tackling colour blindness is a bit trickier because there are multiple types, but at least most studios won't do what Bethesda did with DOOM. They had a colourblind mode where, instead of assisting colourblind players, it filters the game to give you a look at what it would be like if you were colourblind. Extremely helpful. For colourblind folks, critical information like HUD elements, colours in puzzles, crosshairs, waypoints, enemy differences etc., must be conveyed to the players without a loss of information. The best way to do this is to not have a game design that relies only on colour but other visual and maybe audio elements as well. Shapes, symbols, shading and animation can all be used to compensate for colours. Introducing actual colourblind assist filters, or letting players pick their own filter colour scheme, like in Battlefield 1, is an even better option. A general solution which all games can use is to use the blue-orange colour scheme to introduce contrast because all 3 types of colour blindness can see those colours clearly. Having good sound design can even help completely blind players play. Fighting games, especially Killer Instinct, have an excellent sound design that lets blind players play off sound alone. - For players with motor disabilities:
Disabilities like arthritis, tendonitis, and muscular dystrophy, as well as injuries to the hands, can make controls in a game tough. This is especially true when games involve complex button smashes or pressing multiple buttons at once. Games should have options to modify the controls with full customizability. If holding down a joystick to walk around is tough, games can consider having camera assist options or "click to move" features, which essentially reduce the number of joysticks or buttons the player has to interact with. This is especially true in Spider-Man, but games often have minigames incorporated into scenes where you need to bash a button or key at the correct time or a certain number of times. This can be replaced with an assist option in the menu, which allows players to press the button or key only once, or maybe allows them to bypass this portion of gameplay altogether. An often overlooked point is the pause button; it should always be easy to access so players can rest their hands. - For players with cognitive disabilities:
Simulation sickness is a thing which pops up, especially in first-person games. It's when you feel sick because your brain registers a motion, but your inner ears don't, so you feel sick. Being able to disable motion bob, stationary head bobs, motion blur, screen shake, and modifying field-of-vision are all options most games already have. Designing the game's camera to have a smooth tracking motion instead of a jerky motion can also help.
Players suffering from autism, migraines, and epilepsy can become overwhelmed with the amount of visual content in what is known as "sensory overload", so giving players options to reduce the amount of detail in a game is a good design choice.
As said before, clear subtitles and text help out dyslexic players as well. For players who have learning disabilities, simplifying gameplay information is a crucial step. Giving prompts for moves, having waypoints while travelling, updating the mission tasks, and filtering maps so they should contain only important information, can all be really helpful for players who are slower in grasping new information and concepts. Tutorials and practice modes, which can be accessed wherever and whenever, are also excellent options. Players should be able to manual-save and pause games whenever they like, in case they're getting overwhelmed.
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There's a lot that game designers have to take into consideration to improve the accessibility of games, and of course, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Different disabilities have different needs, and they need to be addressed efficiently in order to make video games more inclusive. More and more studios have the incentive to do so because this helps them expand their consumer audience (it's all about the money to a lot of them, after all). There have definitely been improvements in how companies approach accessibility, with Microsoft even having its own special controller. There's a long way to go, but so far, the support for video game accessibility for disabled players seems strong.