Guidance on how and why gaming hardware and operating systems can enable access for gamers with disabilities
Barrie Ellis, Tara Voelker and Ian Hamilton, published March 2017
Accessibility matters, for many reasons. These include:
- The human benefit that gaming can bring, access to recreation, culture and socialising
- The business benefit of reaching the significant numbers involved (over 20% of adults in the USA, not even taking into account 8% of males who have difficulty perceiving colors, or 14% of USA adults who have difficulty reading)
- The impact on developers of their vision reaching as many people as possible, and the competitive advantage of tapping underserved demographics that competitors are not reaching
- The innovative new solutions benefitting all gamers that come from tackling different kinds of problems and constraints
- More recently, due to CVAA, legal compliance
Accessibility features on consoles now have a strong precedent set by both Xbox and PlayStation. However, much more could still be done. Some existing gaming platforms still lack accessibility functionality. Perhaps most important, accessibility consideration in early stages of development for future consoles, those that have yet to be released, could lead to greatly more accessible platforms in the future.
This document contains a list of potential accessibility considerations and further details on what each of them addresses and entails, covering software, hardware, and games.
Although the concept of accessibility may initially seem daunting, the bulk of accessibility is not R&D work. The answers are already out there. Some of these recommendations already exist on current gaming platforms, some come from other industries, some already exist in individual games, some come from public requests, and some are unique to this document.
Some relate to CVAA, some do not. The recommendations intentionally do not indicate which relate CVAA and which are not, as the recommendations are intended for providing a good experience for as many people as possible, rather than just providing compliance.
While it is unrealistic to aim to hit everything, doing something is better than doing nothing. There are many quick wins to get started with, and every effort taken will reduce unnecessary barriers and increase the number of gamers who can take part.
A proven effective approach is to have a simple commitment to always moving forward and never back, to each successive release being more accessible than the last.
A downloadable/printable Word document version is also available.
SOFTWARE
- Controller vibration
- Configurable double-tap and hold
- System level button remapping
- Ability to map multiple inputs to the same button
- Controller assist
- Touch assist
- Switch access
- Allow control by a second user
- Zoom
- Distinct or configurable sounds for notifications
- Color names
- Do not implement colorblind filters
- Text to speech
- Ability for text to speech to read in-game UI
- Speech to text
- Ensure default contrast meets minimum standards
- High contrast mode
- Text size
- System font choice
- Configurable typography
- Pre-defined chat messages and emojis
- System level preference for voice chat
- Predictive text
- Allow as much time as is needed for text to be read
- Notification positioning
- Allow subtitle / caption display preferences to be set at system level
- Ensure all video players support captions
- Stereo / mono toggle & left / right speaker balance
- Voice commands
- Disable auto-playing elements
- Easy mode
- Provide customisable accessibility shortcuts
- Do not rely on speech / motion / touchscreen alone for any commands
- Associate accessibility preferences with profiles rather than devices
- Information and configuration during initial console setup
- Expose as many system level accessibility preferences as possible to developers
- Representational avatars / profile pictures
- Provide well publicised direct route for accessibility feedback on console functionality
HARDWARE
- Enable compatibility with as wide a range of input devices as possible
- Backwards compatibility
- Compatibility with hearing aids and headphones
- Develop modular easily customisable controllers