Investigate accessibility in games

1. Overview

Accessibility is critical to the future of gaming, and it has a longer history than you might imagine. In this tutorial, you’ll prepare to investigate an aspect of game accessibility in more detail.

This is an optional activity, but it’s a great opportunity to learn more about a specific topic that really interests you in a more structured way. It’s also totally flexible — you could set aside one hour of your afternoon to learn about something specific, or plan a deep-dive into a topic that you’ll explore for a longer period of time as you work on your game.

2. Choose your research area

You might already have a topic that you’re very interested in researching, but if you’re not sure then you can choose from a number of different approaches.

Accessibility considerations for a particular genre or game type

It can be a very different experience to play different types of games. For example, a meditative story game and a roguelike platformer may have many things in common, but they’re also quite different!

Although every game is different, types of game may share many similar accessibility considerations. This is a great opportunity to research accessibility in your genre or style of choice before you start work on your own project.

Progress made by a particular studio or creator

The increased visibility of accessibility in games in recent years is due to the ongoing work of players and creators throughout the games industry. Creators working on games, from AAA studios to individual indie creators, have grown and developed their accessibility work over time. Those creators’ stories might be just the inspiration you need as you start your own journey!

The history of accessibility in games

Although accessibility in games may seem like a relatively recent focus, people have been working to make games more accessible for a long time. Researching a particular aspect of the history of accessibility in games will give you a clearer understanding of the journey towards the current accessibility landscape.

The current state of accessibility in games

Perhaps you’re more interested in getting a sense of the current state of accessibility in the industry overall rather than a narrow focus on a specific topic. If so, you can use this as an opportunity to gather a broad range of information on the state of game accessibility today.

3. Prepare to research your topic

When you’ve chosen a topic, you can then prepare to investigate it in more detail.

To prepare for your research:

1. Choose a specific question that you want to answer. Defining a specific question will help you focus your research. It will also help you to identify useful resources.

Examples of focused research questions include:

• Game type: What are the major accessibility challenges for roguelike games?

• History: Who were the early pioneers of accessibility in digital games?

• Creator: How has [studio name] improved the accessibility of its games in the last five years?

2. Set a timeframe for your research. This is an optional constraint that can help you make the most of your research time while giving it a clear scope.

Examples of approaches to research timeframes include the following:

• Committing to one focused hour of research

• Setting aside twenty minutes a day for a week

• Planning an extended research project that you will complete alongside working on your game

3. Consider the wide range of resources available to you. Overview articles and videos can be very useful, but this is a great opportunity to seek out resources that provide the perspectives of players and creators in their own words.

Tip: The Game Accessibility Conference (GAConf) archive is a great place to start for many different topics!

Content note: The medical model of disability

In What is inclusive design?, you learned about the medical model of disability. You may encounter this model of thinking around disability in your research, especially if you choose a topic related to history.

4. Next steps

Research is an important tool for creators — the more you practice, the better you’ll be at finding useful information. This is useful for developing your understanding of topics, as you’ve just done, but it’s also helpful when you’re looking for potential solutions to a problem or examples that you can learn from.

Now you’re ready to focus on the first stage of design and development for your game: pre-production.

In the next project, you’ll:

• Choose and scope the game that you want to make as you complete this course.

• Plan production with accessibility as a key priority.