Advocacy ideas

Suggestions of ways that you can help push accessibility forwards, no matter which part of the industry you are in

Ubisoft devs learning from Josh Straub and Chris "deafgamersTV" Robinson

Most people working in advocacy have a mental checklist of the various things that would make a difference. Every sector of the industry has a part to play, so this list is being shared here as a way to spread some ideas to anyone else who has an interest in accessibility advocacy in the games industry.

If you’re looking to find people to collaborate with on advocacy iniatives either independently or under the banner of the SIG, please get in touch via email, mailing list or our discord channel.

The basics

Significant difference to the level of accessibility provision across the games industry amounts to wide-scale cultural change.

Cultural change cannot come about due to a single effort, due to the many combined forces on maintaining status quo. These forces are particularly strong in established companies in creative industries.

Wide-scale cultural change is dependent on maintained pressure from multiple angles. If any one of those pressures falters, which it will, the remaining pressures still need to be strong enough to outweigh the conflicting pressures for status quo, for long enough for behaviours and attitudes to be permanently changed.

These pressures at a minimum need to be a combination of bottom-up, top-down and external. The following is a list of ways that different industry sectors can contribute to these types of pressure.

Government/public bodies

Tax breaks and grants include encouragement to consider accessibility, in the same way as Screen Australia guidelines from the Australian government, and the EU Commission’s Creative Europe funding
Non-legislative support for best practice guidelines, in a similar way to the UK government’s soft-backing of the BS8878 management guidance for web accessibility
Ensure that non-legislative digital accessibility initiatives include gaming to the same level as other industries

Developers

Adopt best practice guidelines
Share experiences, best practices, and code through networking, writing and speaking at conferences
Encourage accessibility discussion with gamers on social media & forums, and ask specific disability related questions in beta test feedback forms
Lobby engine developers to provide functioanlity at middleware level
Built direct experience and knowledge through simulators (e.g. color oracle) and contact with disabled gamers at events and during testing

Gamers with disabilities

Greater communication with developers about access issues through social media (to contact individual devs, put the name of the game in twitter’s search field, and hit the “people” tab, beta tests, feedback routes; highlighting both flaws and successes
Proactively approach developers and publishers about taking part in play testing and design sprints
Raise awareness in the wider gaming community through forums, reddit, youtube, social media, blog posts etc
Introduce developers to disability communities, such as the audiogames forums
Attend local game developer meetups and events to build relationships with local devs
Attend trade events and speak/network at conferences to raise awareness with both gamers and developers

Industry/trade bodies

Encourage links & facilitate information sharing between specialist , academics and developers
Bridge gap between publicly funded games for health projects and top tier developers
Push for disability to be included in gaming demographic research
Organise accessibility-specific game jams and awareness raising events
Publicise / support / encourage uptake of best practice guidelines by manufacturers, publishers and developers
Include accessibility categories in industry awards, as with the GDAA awards in Australia and the TIGA awards in the UK
Ensure that accessibility is included in industry/government dialogue (such as e-accessibility action plan & tax breaks)
Publicise & promote positive developments
Sponsor accessibility events and initiatives

Incubators / co-working spaces

Publicise best practice guidelines
Host accessibility events – talks, jams, etc
Encourage/facilitate inclusion of players with disabilities in group playtest events

Educators

Guest lectures from accessibility specialists
Discussion of accessibility in relevant general modules (eg. FOV/motion sickness discussed when teaching about camera work)
Include distinct assessable content focused specifically on accessibility
Use accessibility as a criteria in general mark schemes for non-specialist projects
Include best practice guidelines in lists of reading materials

Publishers & distributors

Include access info on features lists on website, press releases, store listings etc
Gather & publicise examples of usage data
Include disabled participants in playtesting / user research recruitment profiles
Include basic access requirements in publisher certification requirements, such as subtitles and avoidance of common epilepsy triggers (both of these examples are required at a publisher level by Ubisoft)
Allow filtering of store listings by accessibility feature (e.g. Steam’s ability to filter by caption availability)
Provide direct routes for gamers to get in touch with developers

Media

Awareness raising articles in gamer press
Educational articles in developer press
Include accessibility criteria in mainstream game reviews, as Gamecritics currently does for hearing impairments

Manufacturers

Permit standardised access info to be displayed on game packaging
Include basic access requirements in platform certification requirements (TCRs, TRCs etc), such as subtitles and avoidance of common epilepsy triggers (both of these examples are required at a publisher level by Ubisoft)
Encourage developers to consider other accessibility features through publicising existing accessibility guidelines
Allow access preferences to be set at a system level and read by games, eg. subtitles always on, subtitle display preferences, vibration on/off, stereo/mono toggle
Allow compatibility with unlicensed bespoke input devices, and backwards compatibility with previous gen controllers
Catch up with the built-in accessibility functionality that is standard on desktop and mobile operating systems, such as high contrast mode, text size, screenreader, and switch support

Platform level accessibility recommendations

Engine/tool vendors (eg. Unity)

Include accessibility tools within IDEs to help developers assess accessibility, eg. Unreal’s built-in colourblindness simulator
Develop or support/publicise additional accessibility libraries to take on some of the heavy lifting, eg. subtitling system, button remapper
Support standard OS-level accessibility functionality, such as VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android, and the subtitle preference API on XB1
Ensure IDEs themselves are developed in line with good accessibility practices, for the benefit of disabled developers.

Academia

Investigate how generic solutions and tools could be developed, eg. cloud based text-to-speech
Gain a better understanding of game accessibility as a phenomena – its importance in society and the impact of of lack of inclusion
Advance general solutions, eg. haptics, binaural audio, eye-gaze
Share research with industry, through blogs,industry conferences etc

Advocacy groups & specialists

Raise awareness about all of the above items, and work with the above groups to bring them about
Develop and evolve best practices
Share & develop expertise internally, through formation of dedicated events, and discussion groups such as IGDA-GASIG
Share & develop expertise externally, awareness raising through guest lectures, guidelines, white papers, publications, blogging, social media, conference talks, code libraries, workshops, and direct dialogue with developers, publishers & policy makers
Provide longer term consultancy and training for developers
Facilitate relationship between developers and non-gaming advocacy groups (eg. RNIB)
Create links between disability communities and development communities, in particular to facilitate playtesting with disabled gamers

Credits

Some items on this are used with permission from the GFH2012 White House policy-briefing book, collated by a group of game developers, accessibility specialists and GFH professionals. Other recent contributors to this list include Barrie Ellis, Thomas Westin, Ian Hamilton and Richard van Tol.

Image credit – Ubisoft