think about your favorite video game if
you lost your site tomorrow would you still be able to play it what about your
hearing or the dexterity in your hands anyone can be a gamer at least in theory
but historically very few games were designed to be played by everyone these
days developers are using some cool tricks to bridge The Divide and we're
not just talking about closed captioning but also settings that changed the
actual gameplay but to appreciate these it helps to understand what gaming was
like in the olden times due to the
limitations of early gaming technology designs were simple and rather
inflexible games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders had high contrast visuals
straightforward gameplay no dialogue and a minimal number of possible inputs
which meant they happen to be somewhat accessible games like these were fine
for people with moderate low vision developmental delays or learning
disabilities even if that wasn't at the front of the developers Minds there's
not a lot of tactical complexity to a game like pong you move the paddle up
then down then up again if you're feeling cheeky
compared to a modern controller the big buttons of an arcade cabinet don't
demand a ton of precision and you can see some common design themes between
old arcade controls and specialized peripherals like the Xbox adaptive
controller and it's assorted plug-in accessories but some of those old games
were also highly visual fast paced and
they had no real easy mode a problem for people who are nearly or completely
blind and for people with more profound fine motor challenges even something as
common as arthritis can seriously impact a player's ability to engage with genres
like first person shooters and Rhythm games as gaming matured we started to
see Gamers getting more options for how they'd interact with their games things
like adjustable difficulty settings simultaneous text and audio dialogue and
lightweight ergonomic controllers but these weren't true accessibility options
as much as they were basic quality of life measures that improved the gaming
experience for a much larger popular Nation than just disabled Gamers for
example assistive settings like tutorials and Story Only modes were
designed to help new and inexperienced players but they also help Gamers with
physical and cognitive disabilities while these helpful options have been
with us for a long time they've often been implemented haphazardly or as an
afterthought because it was left up to individual developers to decide whether
or how to include them unsurprisingly
those developers rarely got it right the first time a good example is the
original Assassin's Creed which has a score of 3.3 out of 10 on can
iplaythat.com because it has no option for subtitles despite being released in
2007. subtitles had been invented only
two years later the second Assassin's Creed had both subtitles and fully
voiced lines in five different languages now many many games later into the same
franchise the accessibility options for Assassin's Creed are a extensive albeit
imperfect and players can separately control the difficulty level for
different aspects of the game like combat exploration and stealth taking
into account cognitive motor vision and
hearing challenges and Ubisoft has been far from The Cutting Edge when it comes
to accessibility compare naughty dog for example who released The Last of Us in
2013 with visual cues for important sounds highlights for small hard to
notice pickups and the option to change handwritten notes to more readable plain
text 2020 is The Last of Us Part Two was
especially ambitious including text to speech fully remappable controls a high
contrast mode labeled subtitles indicating who is saying what a glossary
of game important audio cues screen magnification auto aim and navigation
assistance in fact Naughty Dog promised that blind players could play through
the entire game without cited assistance which many did Naughty Dog more like
well-behaved dog if you don't count crunch but naughty dog and Ubisoft are
large established game developers how are small independent Studios supposed
to provide the same level of accessibility and how are Studios small
and large implementing features specifically designed for disabled
players we'll tell you more right after we thank sidekick for sponsoring this
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productivity potential click the link below to get started the truth is that a
lot of the push for accessibility in games came from naturally disabled
Gamers themselves a lot of experimentation in both software and
Hardware came from independent programmers and Hardware developers
looking to serve a niche Community often because they or someone they knew wanted
to play video games but couldn't it's hard for an able-bodied developer to
imagine in a vacuum all the barriers disabled Gamers might run into never
mind how to address those barriers that's also why the PC with its plethora
of specialized peripherals and open standard connectors like USB has been
the machine of choice for many disabled Gamers the adroit
switchblade controller which allowed Gamers with limited Mobility to play on
the Xbox 360 was originally developed by ablegamers a non-profit organization
dedicated to accessible video games ablegamers was founded by Mark Bartlett
whose best friend was slowly losing her ability to play EverQuest due to
multiple sclerosis it was only after the launch of the adroit switchblade that
Microsoft took notice and tapped ablegamers to help make the Xbox
adaptive controller but the good news is is that the push for Solutions has
already led to some useful features like screen magnification for Low Vision
altered color schemes for different kinds of color blindness and haptic
feedback as a replacement for audible signals any new feature a developer
implements is going to take time and effort but open well-documented
developer resources can shave down that workload to make it more realistic for
small teams to implement some of these Solutions some of the past reluctance to
fully Implement certain kinds of accessibility options like adjustable
difficulty settings aim assist automatic navigation and glowing visual guides
comes from concerns about cheating as
well as a certain stigma common to the mainstream AAA sector a get good
gatekeeping mentality that wants to preserve the perceived exclusivity of
especially challenging games I have Dark
Souls from software some games don't even allow the player to finish the game
on easy mode for an extreme example of
this twisted Metal 2 from 1996 has an
easy mode that ends after the first boss telling players no losers allowed Beyond
this point you must switch to medium or hard to continue because how dare you
try to have fun another concern is that
well certain changes to a game might turn it into a wholly different
experience the accessible version of The Last of Us Part 2 is still a poignant
and brutal narrative experience thanks to the thoughtful work of its developers
however if you took a game like getting over it an experience that is
fundamentally about accepting the frustration that comes with having to
start over from zero and you made it impossible to fail well then you haven't
made a game accessible you've made a completely different game instead
getting over it has options for using a mouse a joystick or a touch screen
allowing flexibility but still retaining the spirit of the experience
a big part of what makes games fun is the catharsis of overcoming a
significant challenge especially a challenge that is difficult or impossible for Less dedicated players
but being unable to participate in a game because you are physically unable
to play is a fundamentally different challenge than the one that was intended
and there are a lot of accessibility options that do not necessarily
eliminate challenge for their intended users for example the quadstick is a
controller specifically designed to allow tetraplegic players to game using
their mouth and honestly if you can't get a killstreak in cod with just your
lips are you even a real gamer the fact that gaming is a more participatory
experience than watching a movie or listening to music complicates the goal
of a universally accessible experience but it also means that games can provide
experiences that might otherwise be Out Of Reach for people with disabilities
for example it's often much harder for wheelchair users to leave the house
which can be extremely socially isolating online video games can be a
great option for shared social experiences despite those physical
barriers there are still Financial barriers however as adaptive controllers
can be prohibitively expensive and it's not all about adapting existing games to
suit disabled Gamers audio games are entirely blind accessible by default
using just audio and haptic feedback to communicate with the player a recent
popular example is the veil a story about a blind Adventurer where the
player has to navigate and even fight and Dodge enemies using only auditory
cues these kinds of games often use binaural audio recording which uses two
microphones specifically positioned to give a sense of 3D space so the player
can tell whether a sound comes from the left or right front or back if you're
wondering what the game looks like well we would show you some gameplay footage but well in the end we're probably never
going to live in a world with perfectly accessible games but there's a lot of
low hanging fruit and great new ideas when it comes to making gaming a hobby
for everyone and my thanks to everyone who watched this whole video like the
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