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Feathervoid1 year ago(+1)

oh neat, a topic about accessibility in gaming!

While not every game can be made accessible for every disability, developers should keep disabled gamers in mind. To shut out a potential playerbase is rude and frankly ableist. We want to play your games, too! I have bad vision and extended wrist movement hurts like hell, so as a rule avoid hyperrealistic games because the vast majority have no accessibility features, to "avoid breaking immersion". Red Dead Redemption's shitty, barely visible collectable flicker my beloathed.

I'm no coder, but here's a list of ways to make a game accessible to players:

TEXT

  • color coded text to show which character says what
  • options for white text on a dark background as well as dark text on a white background
  • text scaling options
  • text/textbox contrast and color options
  • make sure your chosen font is readable! 

VISUALS

  • control screen tilt and shake in a game, as it can cause motion sickness in players
  • control level or turn off flashing and strobing lights, as this can cause migranes, seizures and death if a player goes into shock
  • color filter over characters
  • glow around quest items
  • mark targets
  • counter around collectibles, showing how many items you have taken vs the total available amount
  • control over brightness/contrast/gamma

MECHANICS

  • aim assist
  • auto walk/run toggle
  • auto move to quest/marker/npc

AUDIO

  • audio controls for background fx/music/talking/weapon noise
  • noise to alert player arriving in quest area, near npc or quest item
  • noise that gets louder or softer depending how close or far player is from target

OTHER

  • change button input for controls
  • input to pause/freeze singleplayer game, so player can take a break
  • allow for alternate controllers. Not everyone can use a traditional keyboard or console controller, and many companies are selling custom input controllers for disabled players
  • get rid of microtransactions. It is so easy to sink thousands of dollars into a game by saying "oh its just 2 bucks" every time something new and shiny is shown off, and for us with poor impulse control it is hell.
  • do not put mechanics or game modes behind a paywall. same as above
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redonihunter194 days ago

I do not really know what counts as accessibilty features. How would a painter make an oil painting accessible to a blind person? Making a dexterity based game with hand eye coordination being "accessible" to someone impaired in those areas, how would that even work? It would be a new game. A text and dialoge centered game can have voice, but if the story happens in pictures, that's tough. I would say, making this "accessible" is not merely a feature, it is an adaption with editorial work. I know movies/tv shows that do have such an audio track with descriptions of the important visuals along with the dialoge.

Anyway, I like your list. Most of those should be in games for all people. It is quality of life features, not specialised accessibility features. But most of them can be used to make a game more accessible, if someone would prefer a setting not out of preference, but out of necessity. Like keybindings that require both hands. Or even simple things like wasd with index on f vs. wasd with index on d. All people want configuration choices for their input devices.

As said below, a lot of this could be done on engine level, so developers that use that engine do not need to implement it anew every time. Third party tools can only do so much, and while keybindings are trivial, a color blind mode is not.

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