There are infinitely more accessibility settings and devices on the market now than there’s ever been. Ever. I get that not everyone is able to play, but the industry is leaps above what it was before.
Like, game reviewers have even started pointing out accessibility features specifically - a major release without them is kinda newsworthy.
Sure, indie games might not be complying, but the amount of indie games with no key rebinding or GFX settings is a problem too - those might not be catering to all able-bodied folks either.
I’m happy to give indies a pass because they generally don’t have the resources to know what accessibility settings people need, and they often don’t go through the major reviewers. I think people should absolutely point out those issues, but I really expect new releases to be fully accessible.
Don’t forget Nintendo titles being the most locked-down zero options games on the market. I played a Nintendo game for the first time in a decade recently and my god it felt so antequated. Couldn’t even change volume levels lol.
Yeah, I’m hearing impaired and need captions. I’ve never seen a major game without them for many years now, and recent games have gone above and beyond with things like captioning sounds (not just dialogue) and directional indicators.
I kinda hope someday they’ll remaster the original Assassin’s Creed. It’s the only non-spin off in the series that I haven’t played. I own a copy, but gave up on it because it has no captions and I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.
I also love how difficulty settings are much more common now. I’m never gonna buy a Dark Souls game. Fuck those. I tried the first game and learned my lesson. Thankfully, most games these days don’t take such an elitist stance with difficulty. It’s really common that games these days will let you change difficulty on the fly. Some games have split puzzle vs combat difficulty. I’ve seen some games have specific settings just for reaction timing. And also love those settings that highlight interactive objects so I don’t waste so much time looking for subtle hints that something is interactive.
Not sure how a dev can change fast-paced gameplay without seriously altering the nature of the game, but remappable controls should be the norm, and flashing lights have been known to cause issues for so damn long that it’s baffling that they keep doing it.
Unreadable text is something I know a bit about though. I’ve done some accessibility work for web UIs in the past and I can offer some guidance. Text should have good contrast with the background, said background should be static or even one solid color, text should be large and comfortable to read, and use normal fonts rather than dumb or fancy shit.
My eyes are shit, and I wish every game allowed me to make the text better. Even with glasses I have issues with newer games and tiny writing
UI elements and text should be made to be resizeable and customizable wherever possible. I don’t care if it becomes an ugly blocky mess so long as I can read it.
Personally I have excellent vision but I’m colorblind and sometimes I don’t even know what I’m missing lol.
Yeah, the number of games that list epilepsy warnings is way too high, devs should just not do it. I am not sensitive to flashing lights yet I still hate it.
So devs, if you feel like you need to put a warning, just fix the game to not do that.
I can’t exactly fault developers for focusing on 99.99% of customers that doesn’t have disabilities.
I’m sorry, but 99.99% is a laughable hyperbole. A huuuuge number of people have disabilities and disabilities are extremely diverse. A simple example is colour blindness. Google says 8% of men and 0.5% of women are colour blind. Video games frequently do use colour in a way that makes colour blindness a problem and colour blind modes are an accessibility option.
Google also says 15% of the world has some degree of hearing impairment. That’s admittedly biased towards seniors, but I can find numbers that say 9% of 20-39 year old Canadians have detectable hearing losses. Captions are an accessibility option.
And those are just two examples. There’s tons of disabilities out there. Even when an individual disability might only be 0.1% of the population, add them all together and there’s a substantial number of people who are left out by lack of one accessibility option or another. Aside from obvious disabilities, there’s also just general worsening of reaction times as people age.
Just because someone has a disability, doesn’t mean it’s game-breaking. Yes, 8% of men are red/green colour-blind. But that doesn’t mean 100% of those can’t tell the colours apart. You can be more or less colour-blind. Or so my friend says, because he is colour-blind, but have never experienced that to be an issue in games. Red for him doesn’t look like red does to me. But he still knows what red is. And believe it or not. Most developers don’t exactly use a colour-blind test palette for their gameplay or menus.
Subtitles have been around since at least the playstation2 era. I feel like you would almost struggle to find a modern game that doesn’t have subtitles these days.
You may think my hyperbole is laughable but your response does nothing but follow suit. If you suffer from bad hearing, I’m sorry to say that you might not be able to fully experience a game with speakers. Might want to get a pair of headphones, so that you can 1. Amplify the volume if needed. and 2. raise or lower frequencies you can’t hear, into a range that you can hear. It’s going to sound a little distorted perhaps but at least you will be able to hear it. I’m sure developers do their best to create captions that are important. But I don’t think you understand just what a monumental task it would be to create an automated system for full CC captions of the ambience in a game.
And I’m sorry, did you just list lack of reflexes and reaction time as a disability to gaming? If you don’t have any arms, basketball might just not be for you. If you suffer from bad reaction time. Maybe pick a game that doesn’t rely on reaction time. That’s not on the devs. That’s on you.
While I argue your response is an equity Vs equality issue and your basketball argument kind of conflicts your previous statement, there is the the huge difference of individual cost per game to cater to a/all disability. As you mention automation of these systems aren’t really feasible and although guidelines can be put in place. They are still a significant investment of time and money. You can implement them into an engine but you still need the game to integrate it and although some things might be easy across multiple games (colour blind overlays) some won’t (mechanic driven considerations).
I work on a product that strives for Section 508 compliance, despite the fact that any improvement we make will only be used by fewer than 1% of our userbase.
Yes, we can and do exactly fault developers for ignoring users with disabilities.
Catering, and ignoring. are two completely different words with two completely different meanings. Did you read the article?
Everything they touch on is so incredibly vague that there is no way to make out what the problem actually is.
“fast-paced gameplay (34 per cent)”
34% complained about the gameplay being too fast-paced. What where they playing? No one knows. Could be sitting playing Call of Duty and raging about being 360 no scoped for all we know.
The article is vague on everything. And that’s always on purpose. They’re vague on purpose to maximize outrage. Oh this sounds horrible, look at this, the devs are not catering to disabled players. Should we mention that the kid with 1 hand is upset he can’t play CS:GO competitively? Nah, just call it “lack of customisable control options”
oh I’m sorry. My comment was in response to you, and not the article.
I just instantly thought of that blind kid that beat Ocarina of Time.
Unfortunate but unsurprising, with the broken state many games ship in these days I don’t expect many publishers prioritize accessibility features.
Who paid for this study?
I just want removal of anticheat for single player games/coop (or a toggle option like master chief collection). Trainers are so helpful for younger children and the disabled to enjoy the game with a bit of a skill level adjustment. Subtitles are a must too.
I’m glad the article mentioned flashing lights. I hate those so much in games, that and all the lens flare that’s being added in lately. I’m photosensitive and they can trigger migraines in me, and I’ve had to stop playing when some games when some stupid stylistic lens flare out of no where punches me in the brain. I wish games had settings to turn those off.
When games like starfield exist I beg to differ
