Welcome to the course

Accessibility in games

Explore the vertical slice

Set your learning goal

In this introductory project, you’ll learn more about the Practical Game Accessibility course and reflect on how you can use this course to achieve your goals as a creator. 

What is inclusive design?

Inclusive design in practice

Digital accessibility

Accessibility standards and guidelines

Investigate accessibility in games

Choose and craft your concept

Consider your target players

Create a game design document

Create your production plan

Explore Out of Circulation

Player movement

Camera system

Conversation system

User interfaces (UI)

Audio

Important information

Complete a project retrospective

Continue your learning journey

It can be very tempting to work on planning and creating your game straight away. That drive to bring an idea to life is a core part of being a creator, whatever your medium. However, if you take time now to explore the underlying principles of inclusive design and accessibility, you’ll give yourself a strong foundation as you work on your game. The principles are also deeply practical. Your work starts now!

Inclusive design and accessibility

You’re now ready to plan your game. This is a critical stage of the creative process, especially when you are focusing on accessibility. The preparation, exploration, and scoping that you do in this stage will have a direct impact on your experience when you begin design and development.

In this project, you’ll choose and scope a concept for your game with your target players in mind. You’ll also use accessibility guidelines to help you prepare a plan for production.

Project pre-production

In this project, you’ll explore and extend Out of Circulation as you work on your own game.

The tutorials are in a suggested sequence, but you can explore them in the way that works best for you. Each tutorial contains:

An overview of our work on a specific system or feature, including the impact of user feedback.

Discussion about key decisions that we made and why we made them.

Guidance on how you can explore and extend what we created for Out of Circulation.

Suggestions for ways you can apply what you’ve learned in your own game project. 

Design and development

Production processes don’t end when you finish working on your game.In this final project, you’ll complete a project retrospective and prepare to share your game with a wider audience. You’ll also identify your next steps as a creator who prioritizes accessibility.

Continue your journey

When you make a game, you’re crafting a shared experience. Whether your game is a private gift for one person or a global commercial release, for solo play or many players, it’s an invitation to connect with and respond to your ideas as a creator. When you make your game more accessible, you’re extending that invitation to a wider and more diverse audience.

This course is a practical introduction to accessibility for intermediate creators. As you complete it, you’ll choose a game to create and work on making that game as accessible as possible. 

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

Apply an inclusive design approach to your work as a creator

Identify critical accessibility requirements for your projects

Implement accessibility review and feedback cycles throughout development

Design and develop features using an inclusive design approach

Maintain a focus on accessibility while adapting to constraints and emerging project needs

Practical Game Accessibility

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Overview

Reflect on yourself as a creator

Set your personal goal

Create your development log

Choose an accountability approach

Next steps

In this tutorial, you’ll set a personal learning goal. You’ll also prepare a development log to track your progress as you work through the course.

You'll have the opportunity to bring your own unique background, goals, and learning needs to this course while you learn how to create more accessible games. Reflection will be an important foundation for this; honestly reflecting will help you identify where you are as a creator and where you want to go next.

In this tutorial, you’ll start by reflecting on your personal learning goals and how you plan to approach the challenges of this course. You’ll also prepare a development log (or reflective journal) to track your progress as you work through the course. The practice of keeping a reflective journal or log isn’t specific to developers — all sorts of creators and craftspeople do it to help track progress and reflect on their work.

Take a moment now to reflect on where you are right now as a creator by answering the questions below. Record your responses — you’ll include this in your development log. 

Note: There are no right or wrong answers to these questions!

If you’re an intermediate creator, consider your answers to the following questions:

Are you comfortable working independently, or are you still developing your confidence?

Are you working alone, or are you on a team of collaborators?

Are you working as a generalist across many areas of design and development, or are you focusing on a particular area of interest?

Are you ready to work on your game proactively, or do you want a little more structure and support?

If you are a curious beginner, consider your answers to the following questions:

Are you at the very start of your journey as a creator, or getting close to intermediate level?

Are you interested in a general introduction to game accessibility, or searching for practical guidance that you might be able to implement now?

If you are a more experienced creator, consider your answers to the following questions:

Are you interested in a general refresher, or focused on one area in particular?

Are you open to exploring a case study, or searching for solutions to specific problems?

Your answers to these questions will help you determine your personal goal and support your decision-making as you define and plan your game.

In this practical course you’ll explore and extend Out of Circulation, the vertical slice that we created, but you’ll also have the opportunity to apply what you learn by creating your own game. That’s how you’ll develop the skills that will support you in making more accessible games.

A clear goal will help you get the most out of the course, wherever you are in your personal growth journey. Take some time now to consider what you want to achieve and how you’ll be approaching this course. Record your responses — you’ll include these in your development log too. 

Consider the following questions as you set your personal goal:

Do you want to focus on one or two high priority accessibility considerations in a simple project, or take a more comprehensive and ambitious approach?

Do you want to work solo, or collaborate with a team?

Do you want to work on a game just to support your learning, or create an outcome that you will share more widely?

When you prioritize accessibility from the very start of making a game, it’s not an additional challenge — it's a core part of making the best game that you can. However, prioritizing accessibility does require extra focus and commitment. As with any aspect of being a creator, there will be a learning curve as you develop new skills and gain experience.

If you choose to work on a complicated game with a lot of different accessibility considerations, you’ll be giving yourself a more challenging experience. This might be exactly what you want, but if you’re not quite ready for that challenge, it could become overwhelming.

If you’re not sure what game you want to work on yet, don’t worry — we’ll provide guidance on scoping a game idea with the right level of challenge.

A development log, or devlog, is an ongoing record of your progress on a project. Although some creators just compile a list of the things that they’ve done since the last time they updated the log, devlogs also often include evaluation and reflection on the project so far and the next steps. 

Your devlog can take any format you choose, including handwritten journals, blogs, and videos. If you want to explore a range of examples, take some time to explore itch.io’s Developer Logs section or search for devlogs by creators that you admire.

1.  Choose a format that will work well for you. If your devlog will be digital, take the time now to set up your files or account.

2.  Create an initial log entry that focuses on your self-reflection and personal learning goal.

3.  Decide on an initial update schedule. You might decide to try to update your devlog on a weekly schedule, once for every project in this course, or use another approach that’s right for you. You can adapt this if you need to, but starting with a plan will help you to be consistent.

Accountability approaches can be a useful tool to help you keep learning when you’re balancing lots of different priorities. They’re also something that’s very personal — what works well for one person might not work at all for someone else.

Some options you might want to consider include the following:

You could check in regularly with a group of friends who are also learning.

You could schedule regular time in your calendar to go through the tutorials and work on your game.

You could participate in a longer game jam (one month or more would be best) and create a project to submit to the jam.


Important: Sometimes you might need to set aside personal learning completely, and that’s absolutely okay. This course will still be here whenever you’re ready to come back to it.

Whatever your goals for this learning experience, we hope that Practical Game Accessibility helps you to achieve them! 

In the next project, you’ll explore the inclusive design approach and key principles that will provide a foundation for the rest of the course and the game that you will create.

Set your learning goal

1. Overview

2. Reflect on yourself as a creator

3. Set your personal goal

4. Create your development log

5. Choose an accountability approach

6. Next steps

Complete this tutorial