It’s not something that any mainstream publisher does now, but in 1981 and 1982, Atari did. What, you may ask? Simply, they included a “special [accessibility] feature” option in their top-flight games. Not only this, but they marked the fact clearly on their game boxes and instructions. The disabled gamers in mind were very young kids with slower reactions and abilities. The features generally slowed game play down and made things a lot less hectic and weighted against you. These games were:
Super Breakout, Defender, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Berzerk and Yars Revenge.
The IGDA’s GASIG have been talking about a ratings system for some time now regarding accessibility features in games. To date only 7-128 Software and Deaf Gamers seem to have anything like this in place. It would be fantastic to see something like this take a hold, as age ratings have with PEGI. One day…
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