Tuesday 4 September 2012

Game Accessibility Guidelines

I saw this just now over at RPS and I'm bookmarking it here for myself as much as for other developers following this blog. Gaming Accessibility Guidelines is a project to create a simple source of reference for designers, in order to help ensure that the game can be used by people with any of wide range of impairments and handicaps as comfortably as possible.

This isn't something that affects me, or even anyone I know personally, but from a design standpoint I find it nonetheless pretty staggering, just the extent to which a lot of the really basic needs for accessibility are ignored in so many games (including, but not limited to remappable controls and colourblind options).

Part of the trouble, I imagine, is that for a designer a lot of these barriers for entry for other people, are pretty invisible if they haven't had to cope with them themselves. Moreover, even if one consciously recognises the need to focus on the accessibility of their controls and mechanics, it's not an easy task to identify what needs to be fixed and how to fix it.

So that's where GAG looks like it's pretty awesome as it offers just that. I'm hoping that it finds its way into most designers' bookmarks very quickly indeed.

3 comments:

  1. Hi 9of9,

    I post a comment because I can't find your email address.

    I really admire of your work on the XNA what named
    "XNA RPG 2.5D" but I try to reproduce you shader but unfortunately could not reproduce.

    Can you please provide the shader or any information how it works ?

    I will be very grateful.
    Sorry for my bad english, I am from Ukraine.

    Best regards,
    Evgeniy : maxa280391@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. I get asked this a lot. I'll try and put up a blog post here in the coming days that goes over the basics of the 2.5D engine with some shader code.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's be cool.
    I try to use the depth texture for getting Z coord for pixels but it does not look like your effect.

    I will be wait for your post.Thank you for response.

    Best regards,
    Evgeniy Makhov

    ReplyDelete