This jam is now over. It ran from 2024-02-01 06:00:00 to 2024-02-29 06:00:00.

Games are for everyone! Yet the blind friendly category contains games that are inaccessible to folks who are blind. Let's fix that!

This is a known problem for itch.io. For example, here is a recent GitHub issue, or an older forum thread. In these posts, we explain how this tag is necessary for folks to discover new games which are accessible to them, and how its misuse leads to a poor user experience.

The "senior fart" at itch.io has asked for the community to self-police itself by using the reporting system. I agree with this in principle. However, no substantial action has been taken in response to my personal reports. Perhaps there is greater strength in numbers?

Let's take some time in February to report games that misrepresent their support for blind accessibility. Whether you can only test one game, or you can test all of them, collectively we have the power to improve this.

How to participate

This is an anti-jam. Please join the jam to pledge to report at least one game which misrepresents its accessibility. Do not submit your project. I will delete all submissions.

Instead:

  1. Browse games with support for blind accessibility.
  2. Test a game on this page. You may use a screen reader such as NVDA. It should be usable without looking at the screen.
  3. If it misrepresents its accessibility, then navigate to the Report link at the bottom of the page, and submit a report.

Here is a form letter which you may copy and paste when reporting games:

Greetings! I'm a member of the Blind Accessibility Cleanup Crew. This game is classified as blind-friendly; however, it is not. Please remove this classification from the game metadata until its accessibility improves. Cheers! 

Rules

Please do not name and shame or harass content creators. This lack of awareness is a larger cultural issue, not a problem with any individual developer or studio.

Let's use this moment to educate instead. If you're willing, please provide feedback to the folks who need it. It's most likely a misunderstanding or lack of awareness than anything else.