Every year the pace of chance accelerates. 2017 saw advances on a scale never before seen, and 2018 trumped that by considerable margin. I hope this post will share a sense of that change, of where the industry is currently at, and where it will be heading in future.
There have been too many advances in inclusion of gamers with disabilities to be able to cover everything here, so I’m concentrating on a few key themes; hardware/platform/middleware, information, advocacy & awareness raising, games, and a little on legislation.
Hardware, platform & middleware
Xbox Adaptive Controller in use at Craig Hospital
First and foremost the launch of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, announced in May for Global Accessibility Awareness Day and on sale in September.
I won’t go into too much detail as awareness is now pretty high, but the short version is that it’s a device that can be used in conjunction with a regular controller to replace anything between one and all of the inputs with custom hardware, developed over a number of years in conjunction with Warfighter Engaged, Cerebral Palsy Foundation, AbleGamers, SpecialEffect, and many other individual gamers, advocates and specialists.
From a developer’s perspective it’s just a regular Xbox controller, so if you want to support it design for the people who use it. In particular think about flexibility and avoiding unnecessary complexity; not everyone is able to use 18 buttons or press three things at the same time.
What it is not is a device that takes care of accessibility so that you don’t have to. If anything the XAC increases the need for accessibility in games, as there are now more games who are able to get past hardware barriers only to encounter them in games.
The XAC has already had tremendous impact. Not only on the direct impact but also on general public awareness of and feeling towards accessibility – more on that later!
Microsoft also introduced a bunch of other nice things too. The Xbox Alexa skill. The input learning mode for Narrator. The new Xbox avatars, including wheelchairs and prosthetics. Windows gaze input API. Mixer’s share controller functionality, essentially operating as remote co-pilot.
It wasn’t just The Microsoft Show though. There were other hardware innovations, like the spherical therapy-focussed Mylo controller, and the excellent Game Control Mixer from Celtic Magic and OneSwitch which allows complex control through a single button.
With CVAA approaching there has been a bit of movement on communication tools; Origin patching in text to speech for chat messages, Twitch adding a text contrast option for usernames, and Discord kicking off a series of accessibility updates starting with colourblind options.
And a bit of progress with engines. While we’re not yet seeing the direct accessibility support that the main engines could and should be providing, there has been some more nice work done on plugins, such as the Unity Sinput plugin which aims to simply mapping across input devices with a focus on multiplayer, the Unity Racing Audio Display for making racing games accessible to people with no sight, and also the Unreal Accessible Realities plugin aimed at making VR & AR in particular more accessible to people with low/no vision. And last but not least ADL engine, a standalone multiplayer text adventure engine with a ton of nice accessibility things built in.
Information
Information for developers
GMTK’s Designing for Disability video series
As always 2018 saw ongoing updates to www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com, but a whole swathe of new resources arrived too.
Accessible.games accessible player experience design patterns from AbleGamers and York University
Accessiblegamedesign.com, UX focussed guidelines from Ruthie Edwards
Lovely Designing For Disability video series from Game Maker’s Toolkit
The Game Accessibility Conference expanding to Europe, with GAconf EU
A record breaking number of accessibility sessions at GDC, including sponsored sessions from Ubisoft and Xbox
Two mainstream accessibility conferences (A11yTO in Toronto and TechShare Pro in London) adding dedicated game accessibility tracks and exhibits
TIGA’s VR accessibility guide
Tara Voelker’s Accessibility Scorecard V2
Information from players
Josh Straub, Steve Saylor, Chris “deafgamersTV” Robinson and Cherry Thompson at Ubisoft Montreal
And of course a wonderful resource is simply engaging with your audience. This really kicked up a gear in 2018, in a few different ways.
Firstly gamers with disabilities being brought in to studios for events comprising talks, design sprints and co-creation workshops, often behind the scenes but with some companies like Xbox, EA, Sony, Ubisoft and Splash Damage talking openly about what they’ve been up to.
Collaborations with non-gaming advocacy organisations, including Sony & Gallaudet looking at accessibility of VR for deaf gamers, Ubisoft’s collaboration with AAPEI-EPANOU on accessibility for gamers with learning disabilities.
User research is a key part of it too. 2018 saw a big increase in the number of studios including people with disabilities in user research, including Microsoft partnering with the Shepherd Center to create the Accessibility User Research Collective; aimed at accessibility across all products but already with a number of research projects undertaken for gaming.
Feedback channels have also increased, with both EA and Mixer implementing specific routes for people to submit accessibility issues, in EA’s case tied directly to each teams internal bug tracking systems.
Information for players
EA's accessibility information
As part of the same accessibility portal that the reporting system falls under, EA launched a resources section, hosting detailed accessibility information for several of their titles. Buying games that turn out to be inaccessible is still a really significant problem, so offering information to allow gamers to make informed purchase decisions is a really wonderful thing. This was quickly followed by Ubisoft’s accessibility FAQs, another FAQ for Forza Horizon 4, and a really wonderful extensive blog post for Shadow of the Tomb Raider. SOTTR’s in particular stood out as it was put up several weeks before the launch of the game.
Review site Gamecritics upped their game, including screenshots of subtitle presentation and default controls in every one of their reviews, together with info on whether/how each can be configured. A really simple thing to do that requires no accessibility knowledge, yet still provides vital information for many players.
Advocacy & awareness raising
Solomon Romney on stage at the Forza Horizon E3 presentation
This was an area of incredible progress, with not just the industry and not just the industry and gamers but the population in general leaving 2018 with much greater awareness of, acceptance of and excitement about the possibilities of accessibility than they entered the year with.
The Xbox adaptive controller led the charge here, with Microsoft putting some considerable weight behind spreading awareness about it, from the Forza Horizon 4’s E3 presentation including a Solomon Romney up on onstage playing with a XAC together with a one-handed stick peripheral through to Microsoft’s holiday commercial. For one of the big tech companies to dedicate their holiday commercial slot solely to raising awareness about the importance of game accessibility is still mind blowing for me, for someone working in advocacy it really is a dream come true.
Xbox got up to plenty of other nice things too, from working with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on an event for amputees,
