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Implement Accessibility into your game

A topic by marcelojrs created Apr 30, 2024 Views: 431 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Hello, I am a software engineer in the last semester of my college, and I am doing some research on accessibility in games for my final year project, while doing research I ended up here on itch.io and played a bunch of different games, and noticed most of them don't have much accessible features or a accessible mode for players with disbailities could enjoy their game

So here I wanted to discuss with other players and developers about this, what you guys think of accessibility? if you are interested in implementing in your game, you can reach out to me and we can talk more about it!

You could think about creating a "Accessible Games Jam". Explane what disabilities you are aiming for and what are potential accessibility features. You could aim for new games with accessible features, or making existing games more accessible, or both ...

I think there are a lot of developers on itch that are willing to try out something new. But I think that it is important that you give some guidance: For the current project I am working on I have no idea how to make it more accessable (except for color-blind mode).

That´s a good Idea, will be studying on doing this Games Jam, would be interesting.

But on this post here I am willing to help anyone on making games more accessible, if you want I can help you on your own game, will charge nothing for it, just for the experience and the opportunity to add this to my project on university.

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