Hello!

If you’re reading this, you’re probably curious about videogame accessibility. What is that? How can you make an accessible game? How will an accessibility consultant help me achieve that? Say no more: I wrote this post to introduce you to this subject and explain what I do as an accessibility consultant to make games everyone, even people with disabilities, can play.

This post will talk about:

• What is accessibility?
• Why you should think about accessibility; and
• What I can do for your game to make it accessible.

What is accessibility

Simply put, an accessible game is a game anyone can play, even people with disabilities. It takes into account how different users will approach it, and designs its mechanics inclusively so everyone an play. Usually, this means that people with disabilities, and a variety of needs, will be able to play it.

An accessibility consultant is someone whose role is to understand players’ needs and design and test accessible experiences - like I did when I helped Ericbomb with Necromancer Nonsense, a blind-accessible Real-Time Strategy Game.

Who benefits from accessibility?

People with disabilities play games, and more often than we might think, the same games everyone else does. Sometimes, games are just plain inaccessible for them. Other times, they’re able to adapt. But it’s way more pleasant when the game considers their needs in the design.

People without disabilities can also benefit from accessible design. Think about every time you’ve used subtitles or adjusted the ratio between a game’s music volume and its sound effects.

I’ll tell you a little fictional story to visualize it better:

Meet Jeremy. He’s a regular teenager who enjoys playing First-Person Shooters in his parents’ home office. One day, his bluetooth headphones went low on battery and suddenly turned off, so Jeremy had to listen to his game’s sound cues through the computer’s regular speakers. It wasn’t so bad until his father said: “That’s too loud! I’m trying to read a book.” So now poor Jeremy has to play a shooting game with his sound cues at 10% volume or even lower, without headphones. And his friends outbeat him every time, because he can’t hear them when they come from behind by surprise.

Now meet Jessica. She is also a regular teenager who likes to play First-Person Shooters. However, Jessica is also hard of hearing and deaf in one ear, so she can’t play all sound-based games; nor do it as well as Jeremy (when he’s wearing headphones, of course). She needs visual cues beside of the sound, and to adapt the sound settings because she doesn’t perceive stereo the same way.

Both Jeremy and Jessica had struggles with this game. But after this pitiful afternoon, Jeremy only needs to charge his headphones and he’ll go back to the leaderboard. Jessica, on the other hand, may never outbeat Jeremy if the game doesn’t adapt to her needs.

Why does Jessica want to play that game? Or: why do people with disabilities play games?

Maybe you’re wondering why Jessica even wants to play the first-person shooter game. But it’s quite simple: she loves the thrill of it, she likes that genre and, on top of that, all her friends play this game and keep talking about it every time they’re they’re together, even during school classes. For people with disabilities as much as everyone else, games can be a fulfilling a form of entertainment, relaxation and social connection. So perhaps we should ask: why should Jessica not try to play that game, if she wants to?

How can we make games accessible?

Several things go into making a game accessible. This time, I’ll focus on visual needs to explain how we achieve it.

The 4 main principles of accessibility are:

• Perceive the content: If you have perfect vision, you might see the whole UI without problem. If it’s not so good, you might need to make adjustments to the display scaling and font size. If you’re blind or have low vision, you bet everything from enemies, text and UI will need an alternative or complementary cue: from being read by a screen reader, to sound cues, or even audiodescriptions.
• Operate the content: When you’re blind, you usually can’t click on buttons with a mouse. You’ll usually need to be able to play the game with your keyboard. Test and make sure all your buttons and interactions are accessible to your demographics. The more demographics included, the better.
• Understand the content: This one’s a little tricky. But the most universal way you can integrate it is in tutorials, clear labels for the UI (e.g. if you use icons without text labels, make sure your players can recognize clearly what they mean).
• Robust content: This is about making the game compatible with more devices and assistive technologies. That is, for example: if you can, it’s important that you let a screen reader user connect their screen reader to the game, so they can use it to read your text with the voices and settings they have already set up.

Will accessibility make your game less fun?

Absolutely not! That’s not the goal. Games aren’t meant to just be functional. They’re also meant to be challenging, satisfying and fun! So maybe you need to ensure all of your User Interface has good contrast, because that’s a functional thing; but accessibility for the game itself will depend on your goals.

Say you want to make a puzzle about finding invisible items. Naturally, the puzzle is to find them through means other than vision, so those items may have zero contrast with the background.

Accessibility comes into play in the mechanics the player uses to find them. Maybe they’re sound-based, like following a beep in a game of hot and cold. So to adapt to Jessica’s needs, you’ll add visual cues to go along with the sound.

Making accessible games is nice, but isn't it too complicated?

I have to agree: it’s hard to make a game universally accessible, especially an indie game or even harder, a short jam game. It’s hard work, and sometimes full of surprises.

I’ll even tell you my own story: I’m not a developer, but I’m trying to learn game engines code. So I tried making my first game and tried to make it blind-accessible. Mountain Ski was a pretty simple text adventure, made on Quest. The game is mostly text and links: the most accessible thing, in theory.

I thought all I needed to so was to code alternative text descriptions into the game images. And I did. It wasn’t that straightforward, but I did. However, when I started testing the game itself, I realized the HTML export wasn’t accessible to NVDA (a widely used screen reader). It was only compatible with another one: JAWS. Once I found that out, I had three options: A) start learning another game engine and re-do everything; B) give up, or C) try to find ways around my limitations, and let the game engine developers know about these problems to contribute for future improvement.

All in all, it was not what I wanted originally, and I could have been disappointed, but I’m proud. I don’t know how to use Godot or Unity. So I was learning how to use a text adventure engine and developing my first game ever and, on top of it, thinking about accessibility. So that a lot on my plate and given how things were, it was a pretty good outcome.

The key takeaway is: choose the right engine before you start but, if you’ve already started, we can still work with what we have. Understanding your limitations, the engine’s limitations and your goals is a key aspect is this process.

Another takeaway: it’s possible to make games accessible in a short timespan. Make a decision about who your demographics are and about your goals and then do your best to accomplish them. Scoping well is key.

Examples of accessible games

Check out the Games for Blind Gamers 4 jam submissions to see a list of excellent blind-accessible games that were made in a month. These aren’t only audiogames, but games sighted people will also enjoy. They range from cozy games, to RPGs and a challenging real-time strategy games.

My favorite games are in my article Top Picks: Best Blind Accessible Games from the Games for Blind Gamers 4. You can also see my breakdown of their accessibility features, to understand how some games go beyond audio features to think about intersection with deafblindness and mobility impairments.

In short: in a month, you can make very fun and highly visual games, that are also accessible and fun to blind players. Some are longer, some are simpler, they’re all complete enough. Clear goals and a realistic scope does wonders.

Accessibility consulting: What I need from you as the developer

So now you know what accessible games are and are ready to develop one with the assistance of an accessibility consultant. So I’ll do my thing, and you’ll do yours: as a team. If we work together, this is what I’ll generally need from you:

1. You’ll have to do the coding, because I can only code HTML. For blind accessibility, Unity and Godot are the best options, so you’ll probably want to know a bit about those. And I know who to ask if we need help - there are many other developers making accessible games, ready to support each other.
2. You need to do the art. I can advise on color contrast (the best way is deciding on key color templates early on), but I am not that good of an artist.
3. You provide the audio from the audiodescriptions. I provide the script.
4. You can teach me basics about how to use the Unity Accessibility Plugin to have my assistance for specific tasks.

But most importantly: I need you to be dedicated to this goal. Accessibility must be a priority, and not simply dropped if it gets too difficult simply because you’d prefer to add a new inaccessible game mechanic or scene.

What you'll get from me as an accessibility consultant

Well, this highly depends on your goals, of course. But here’s a few things I’ve done in past games:

• Keyboard accessibility: I make a list of how a keyboard should interact with different kinds of buttons: spacebar to select a checkbox, arrows to move up and down, help finding good controls.
• Screen reader accessibility: It’s way easier if the game is innately compatible with a screen reader, and you can do this with the Unity Accessibility Plugin and it’s already possible with Godot, too. In any case, we want screen readers users to enjoy the game happily. We’re also talking about using headings for texts and menu stuff.
• Audiodescription: If you reached a game where everything is dark, and you can still interact with things, but can’t see them - and you were to click on the big red button (labeled with a caption) - imagine what it would be if you pressed it and nothing happened? Or perhaps you’d hear epic music, but have no idea what was going on. Audiodescription lets a blind user know what’s going on in that thrilling cutscene.
• Wording: Verbose, complicated tutorials can be difficult to read and no one has that much patience. I can help trim things down until they’re more concise.

Accessibility for a range of disabilities, and other services

Apart from blind accessibility, there are a range of other services I can provide:

• Captions. I can’t code them. But what I can do is using best practices to ensure each caption/subtitle is the right length, and that line breaks are at the appropriate spots.
• Captions (part 2): I can also help writing the captions script to ensure important sounds are conveyed through them or through other visual cues, for deaf players.
• Photosensitive epilepsy: Most people are midly annoyed by a game flashing repeatedly, but some have seizures. This is rather blunt, but true. I can never guarantee 100% safety, but we can strive for reducing harm: I have some experience recognizing a variety of dangerous patterns to avoid, and recommending safer alternatives and/or settings.
• Subtitles: Not exactly accessibility, I’ll also be thrilled to translate your game into European Portuguese. How I wish we had more games in my native language.
• Lots and lots more. Take a look at the Games Accessibility Guidelines: I can help your achieve any of those goals.

My favorite genres - and games I've worked on:

Here are genres I love, with links to games I’ve worked on in that genre:

• Point and Click adventures, like the funny A Crisis of Fae, the probably-will-be-a-new-classic Foolish Mortals, and, of course, Broken Sword and Wadjet Eye Games, which I’m a big fan of. This genre’s potential for enjoyment and accessibility is very high. If you’re an Adventure dev, please do reach out. Let’s do something together.
• I also like cozy games, like the short and, frankly, a bit buggy Sort it Out!. I also played a bunch of Nintendogs and Petz 4 as a young lass, as well as The Sims.
• Games with mesmerizing art and with a story, like Guiding Star and, modesty aside, Mountain Ski;
• Strategy games, like the addictive, challenging and blind-accessible Necromancer Nonsense and Age of Mythology;

Other games I like (but haven’t yet worked with):

• Games about nature, just because I love nature.
• City-management like Theme Park World.
• Old-school Educational games. Totally into Carmen Sandiego and children’s games from the 90s and 00s.
• … and more.

Probably good to give a heads-up that I’m not very much into:

• Horror games.
• Shooting games. Lots of pew pews are not my thing. That said, I watch streams of The Last of Us a lot.
• Very violent / gory games. That’s not to say I don’t like games with swords, which I do.

I may not join all accessible game projects, but I am always happy to do help someone make their game more inclusive.

Conclusions: To infinity and beyond

My kickstarting motivation for writing this post was I felt like I really wished someone would come and ask: “Can you please write audiodescriptions for my game?” And I would like to say yes. But frankly, beyond that, I’m always delighted when people care about accessibility.

So, we delved upon what’s needed to make an acessible game - from scoping well, to having clear goals and demographics, and doing our best with our limitations. I hope this was inspiring for you, because welcoming new player demographics can be a very rich experience.

On that note, please reach out if you are looking for an acessibility consultant and think I could be a good partner. I’ll be around, happy to join in!

Until then, keep making great and accessible games.

• Patrícia, 22nd of June, 2025