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).

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

I think this site is not good for it because  it's mostly it can be devs producing games in jams, where the time limit means there's little time for accessibility implementation.

And in a way, that's part of the problem - that it's so time-consuming that devs often can't do it. There need to be better ways for devs to feel able to support a11y, extra tools for engines and the like. It's unfortunate that in some cases I'm seeing the engines themselves not providing key features.

What I would love to see for game jams is that after the submission deadline, there's some way for devs to add in missing a11y features. But when devs are more practiced with it, they would probably be able to do it as they went because they would know the implementation patterns. Particularly where in some cases, the a11y feature is actually the absence of a game mechanic, or is a handy feature for testing, and hence feature-flagging those mechanics straight away means you only need to provide the mechanism to set the flag. I would love to see more discussion about good practice like this.

Hi @redonihunter. Thanks for the correction about jams vs games on this site.

Your discussion of how to make games accessible when their core mechanic relies on ability is interesting. If you did provide options that "nerfed" your gameplay, does that stop someone enjoying the experience of playing it? I actually don't know. You the developer not cannot easily make judgements on the enjoyment that someone may get from playing it. But at least they can experience the game in some way. Take your example of a blind person and an oil painting or visual-based game. The accessibility is being able to give the person a description of it so that they have at least some frame of reference in which to understand it or talk about it with others. They're not left out. With my latest game, despite being a timer-based game, able people were asking for a slower or non-timed experience. Ability may not even come into it!

Of course there are problems if you bring people of different abilities together in some way, like high score tables or multiplayer, but there can be mitigations. But as you say, they take time and effort, which is difficult for the small developer. We do what we can, but it's important that we try to do it.

There are tools for checking some of these things. Colour blindness, contrast levels and text sizes/clarity can all be assessed just from screenshots with simulator tools. Designers usually have studied this a lot so that they avoid problems right from the start before it becomes expensive to correct. You'll often hear things like taking a mobile-first approach, because it's deemed to be one of the lowest common denominators with the simplest kinds of interaction and smallest screen real-estate. 

This site is worth a read, just for awareness of things, https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/.