WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.400 Think about your favorite video game. If you lost your sight tomorrow, 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:09.240 would you still be able to play it? What about your hearing? Or the dexterity in your hands? 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:14.680 Anyone can be a gamer, at least in theory, but historically, very few games were designed 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:18.880 to be played by everyone. These days, developers are using some cool tricks 00:00:18.880 --> 00:00:22.240 to bridge the divide. And we're not just talking about closed captioning, 00:00:22.240 --> 00:00:25.720 but also settings that change the actual gameplay. 00:00:25.720 --> 00:00:29.240 But to appreciate these, it helps to understand what gaming was like 00:00:29.240 --> 00:00:33.880 in the olden times. Due to the limitations of early gaming technology, 00:00:33.880 --> 00:00:38.960 designs were simple and rather inflexible. Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:42.880 had high contrast visuals, straightforward gameplay, no dialogue, 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:48.800 and a minimal number of possible inputs, which meant they happened to be somewhat accessible. 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:53.340 Games like these were fine for people with moderate low vision, developmental delays, 00:00:53.340 --> 00:00:57.920 or learning disabilities, even if that wasn't at the front of the developer's minds. 00:00:57.960 --> 00:01:01.480 There's not a lot of tactical complexity to a game like Pong. 00:01:01.480 --> 00:01:06.440 You move the paddle up, then down, then up again, if you're feeling cheeky. 00:01:06.440 --> 00:01:10.360 Compared to a modern controller, the big buttons of an arcade cabinet 00:01:10.360 --> 00:01:14.080 don't demand a ton of precision. And you can see some common design themes 00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:17.280 between old arcade controls and specialized peripherals, 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:21.560 like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, and its assorted plug-in accessories. 00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:25.120 But some of those old games were also highly visual, 00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:29.040 fast-paced, and they had no real easy mode. 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:35.200 A problem for people who are nearly or completely blind, and for people with more profound, fine motor challenges. 00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:39.260 Even something as common as arthritis can seriously impact a player's ability 00:01:39.260 --> 00:01:43.160 to engage with genres like first-person shooters and rhythm games. 00:01:43.160 --> 00:01:48.920 As gaming matured, we started to see gamers getting more options for how they'd interact with their games, 00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:53.440 things like adjustable difficulty settings, simultaneous text and audio dialogue, 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:57.960 and lightweight ergonomic controllers. But these weren't true accessibility options, 00:01:57.960 --> 00:02:02.320 as much as they were basic quality of life measures that improved the gaming experience 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:06.400 for a much larger population than just disabled gamers. 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:10.920 For example, assistive settings like tutorials and story-only modes were designed 00:02:10.920 --> 00:02:15.180 to help new and inexperienced players, but they also help gamers 00:02:15.180 --> 00:02:19.320 with physical and cognitive disabilities. While these helpful options have been with us 00:02:19.320 --> 00:02:24.520 for a long time, they've often been implemented haphazardly, or as an afterthought, 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:30.520 because it was left up to individual developers to decide whether or how to include them. 00:02:30.520 --> 00:02:34.480 Unsurprisingly, those developers rarely got it right the first time. 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:42.000 A good example is the original Assassin's Creed, which has a score of 3.3 out of 10 on CanIPlayThat.com 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:46.960 because it has no option for subtitles, despite being released in 2007. 00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:52.060 Subtitles had been invented. Only two years later, the second Assassin's Creed 00:02:52.060 --> 00:02:56.580 had both subtitles and fully voiced lines in five different languages. 00:02:56.580 --> 00:03:01.300 Many. Now, many, many, many games later into the same franchise, 00:03:01.300 --> 00:03:06.300 the accessibility options for Assassin's Creed are extensive, albeit imperfect, 00:03:06.300 --> 00:03:10.300 and players can separately control the difficulty level for different aspects of the game, 00:03:10.300 --> 00:03:16.500 like combat, exploration, and stealth, taking into account cognitive, motor, vision, 00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:20.460 and hearing challenges. And Ubisoft has been far from the cutting edge 00:03:20.460 --> 00:03:25.860 when it comes to accessibility. Compare Naughty Dog, for example, who released The Last of Us in 2013 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:30.940 with visual cues for important sounds, highlights for small, hard to notice pickups, 00:03:30.940 --> 00:03:35.340 and the option to change handwritten notes to more readable, plain text. 00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:38.860 2020's The Last of Us Part II was especially ambitious, 00:03:38.860 --> 00:03:41.860 including text to speech, fully remappable controls, 00:03:41.860 --> 00:03:46.300 a high contrast mode, labeled subtitles, indicating who is saying what, 00:03:46.300 --> 00:03:52.900 a glossary of game-important audio cues, screen magnification, auto-aim, and navigation assistance. 00:03:52.900 --> 00:03:59.380 In fact, Naughty Dog promised that blind players could play through the entire game without sighted assistance. 00:03:59.380 --> 00:04:03.420 Which many did? Naughty Dog, more like well-behaved dog, 00:04:03.420 --> 00:04:08.660 if you don't count the crunch. But Naughty Dog and Ubisoft are large, established game developers. 00:04:08.660 --> 00:04:12.980 How are small, independent studios supposed to provide the same level of accessibility? 00:04:12.980 --> 00:04:17.540 And how are studios small and large, implementing features specifically designed 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:22.180 for disabled players? The truth is that a lot of the push for accessibility in games 00:04:22.180 --> 00:04:25.620 came from, naturally, disabled gamers themselves. 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:28.780 A lot of experimentation in both software and hardware 00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:31.820 came from independent programmers and hardware developers 00:04:31.820 --> 00:04:35.700 looking to serve a niche community, often because they or someone they knew 00:04:35.700 --> 00:04:40.180 wanted to play video games, but couldn't. It's hard for an able-bodied developer 00:04:40.180 --> 00:04:44.660 to imagine in a vacuum all the barriers disabled gamers might run into. 00:04:44.660 --> 00:04:48.340 Never mind how to address those barriers. That's also why the PC, 00:04:48.340 --> 00:04:53.100 with its plethora of specialized peripherals and open standard connectors like USB, 00:04:53.100 --> 00:04:56.380 has been the machine of choice for many disabled gamers. 00:04:56.380 --> 00:04:59.580 The Adroit Adroit Switchblade Controller, 00:04:59.580 --> 00:05:03.300 which allowed gamers with limited mobility to play on the Xbox 360, 00:05:03.300 --> 00:05:07.780 was originally developed by Abel Gamers, a non-profit organization dedicated 00:05:07.780 --> 00:05:11.740 to accessible video games. Abel Gamers was founded by Mark Bartlett, 00:05:11.740 --> 00:05:16.660 whose best friend was slowly losing her ability to play EverQuest due to multiple sclerosis. 00:05:16.660 --> 00:05:21.980 It was only after the launch of the Adroit Switchblade that Microsoft took notice and tapped Abel Gamers 00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:25.180 to help make the Xbox Adaptive Controller. 00:05:25.180 --> 00:05:29.500 But the good news is that the push for solutions has already led to some useful features 00:05:29.500 --> 00:05:34.860 like screen magnification for low vision, altered color schemes for different kinds of color blindness, 00:05:34.860 --> 00:05:38.500 and haptic feedback as a replacement for audible signals. 00:05:38.500 --> 00:05:41.620 Any new feature a developer implements is going to take time and effort, 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:44.660 but open, well-documented developer resources 00:05:44.660 --> 00:05:48.580 can shave down that workload and make it more realistic for small teams 00:05:48.580 --> 00:05:51.940 to implement some of these solutions. Some of the past reluctance 00:05:51.940 --> 00:05:54.980 to fully implement certain kinds of accessibility options 00:05:54.980 --> 00:05:58.940 like adjustable difficulty settings, aim assist, automatic navigation, 00:05:58.940 --> 00:06:03.460 and glowing visual guides comes from concerns about cheating, 00:06:03.460 --> 00:06:08.100 as well as a certain stigma common to the mainstream AAA sector, 00:06:08.100 --> 00:06:13.660 a get good gatekeeping mentality that wants to preserve the perceived exclusivity 00:06:13.660 --> 00:06:16.740 of especially challenging games. 00:06:16.740 --> 00:06:20.940 Dark Souls, from software. Some games don't even allow the player 00:06:20.940 --> 00:06:25.380 to finish the game on easy mode. For an extreme example of this, 00:06:25.380 --> 00:06:28.940 Twisted Metal 2 from 1996 has an easy mode 00:06:28.940 --> 00:06:34.380 that ends after the first boss, telling players no losers allowed beyond this point. 00:06:34.380 --> 00:06:41.180 You must switch to medium or hard to continue. Because how dare you try to have fun? 00:06:41.180 --> 00:06:44.900 Another concern is that, well, certain changes to a game 00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:50.540 might turn it into a wholly different experience. The accessible version of The Last of Us Part 2 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:54.100 is still a poignant and brutal narrative experience 00:06:54.100 --> 00:06:58.780 thanks to the thoughtful work of its developers. However, if you took a game like Getting Over It, 00:06:58.780 --> 00:07:02.020 an experience that is fundamentally about accepting the frustration 00:07:02.020 --> 00:07:06.780 that comes with having to start over from zero, and you made it impossible to fail, 00:07:06.780 --> 00:07:11.420 well, then you haven't made a game accessible, you've made a completely different game. 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:16.060 Instead, Getting Over It has options for using a mouse, a joystick, or a touchscreen, 00:07:16.060 --> 00:07:20.780 allowing flexibility, but still retaining the spirit of the experience. 00:07:20.780 --> 00:07:25.780 A big part of what makes games fun is the catharsis of overcoming a significant challenge, 00:07:25.780 --> 00:07:30.020 especially a challenge that is difficult or impossible for less dedicated players. 00:07:30.020 --> 00:07:34.820 But being unable to participate in a game because you are physically unable to play 00:07:34.820 --> 00:07:37.980 is a fundamentally different challenge than the one that was intended. 00:07:37.980 --> 00:07:42.620 And there are a lot of accessibility options that do not necessarily eliminate challenge 00:07:42.620 --> 00:07:46.460 for their intended users. For example, the Quadstick is a controller 00:07:46.460 --> 00:07:50.660 specifically designed to allow tetraplegic players to game using their mouth. 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:55.340 And honestly, if you can't get a kill streak and cod with just your lips, are you even a real gamer? 00:07:55.340 --> 00:08:00.140 The fact that gaming is a more participatory experience than watching a movie or listening to music 00:08:00.140 --> 00:08:03.860 complicates the goal of a universally accessible experience. 00:08:03.860 --> 00:08:08.100 But it also means that games can provide experiences that might otherwise be out of reach 00:08:08.100 --> 00:08:11.220 for people with disabilities. For example, it's often much harder 00:08:11.220 --> 00:08:15.740 for wheelchair users to leave the house, which can be extremely socially isolating. 00:08:15.740 --> 00:08:19.820 Online video games can be a great option for shared social experiences, 00:08:19.820 --> 00:08:23.420 despite those physical barriers. There are still financial barriers, however, 00:08:23.420 --> 00:08:27.100 as adaptive controllers can be prohibitively expensive. 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:31.460 And it's not all about adapting existing games to suit disabled gamers. 00:08:31.460 --> 00:08:34.860 Audio games are entirely blind accessible by default, 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:38.740 using just audio and haptic feedback to communicate with the player. 00:08:38.740 --> 00:08:42.860 A recent popular example is The Vale, a story about a blind adventurer 00:08:42.860 --> 00:08:48.380 where the player has to navigate and even fight and dodge enemies using only auditory cues. 00:08:48.380 --> 00:08:54.020 These kinds of games often use binaural audio recording, which uses two microphones specifically positioned 00:08:54.020 --> 00:08:58.820 to give a sense of 3D space. So the player can tell whether a sound comes from the left 00:08:58.820 --> 00:09:02.100 or right, front or back. If you're wondering what the game looks like, 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:07.460 well, we would show you some gameplay footage, but well. In the end, we're probably never going to live in a world 00:09:07.460 --> 00:09:11.420 with perfectly accessible games, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit 00:09:11.420 --> 00:09:15.580 and great new ideas when it comes to making gaming a hobby for everyone. 00:09:15.580 --> 00:09:18.820 And my thanks to everyone who watched this whole video. 00:09:18.820 --> 00:09:23.260 Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked. To check out our other videos, we got lots. 00:09:23.260 --> 00:09:29.300 Comment below with video suggestions. We can make a lot more. And don't forget to subscribe and follow Tech Weekly. 00:09:29.300 --> 00:09:32.420 That's this channel. So in case you were, where am I?