Graduate Show Video Script

Duration: Roughly 10 mins

 

Hello, and welcome to ADGS2020! I’m James Hunter, a 4th year student and this is my honours project: A Taxonomy of Accessibility Standards – Considerations for the Disabled Gamer.

​

As the name implies, this project focuses on exploring accessibility and how effectively it is implemented in games, and how considered disabled groups are as a result.

​

Imagine picking up a game you haven’t touched in a couple of months due to other commitments. How often have you found yourself wondering “where am I? What’s going on? How do I pull off that cool combo move?”

How often have you tried to play a game with the sound on mute? Does it make it harder to interpret what’s going on? Perhaps it makes it harder to notice particular gameplay elements. Imagine this without the subtitles in a noisy environment.

Any game has accessible features built into them; it’s just that sometimes you don’t notice they are there. Others are clearly pointed out in places such as the options menu. When these features are missing, however, that’s when problems can start to arise.

​

Accessibility features can help everybody, not just disabled gamers. They should enhance a gameplay experience by making it easier to play and understand. If you can design for a disabled user, you can design for everyone.  It’s like putting a ramp in place for accessing a building. A wheelchair bound individual or an able-bodied individual alike can use that as a means to enter. Games need to have the same level of consideration in place to ensure a similar result.

So the question is... do they?

​

This honours project sought to review several games from the last decade to see how well they managed to cater to identified accessibility groups to help make them included.

​

There are many disabilities, so it was important to group them in way that made the project both feasible and manageable. Ultimately, four accessibility groups were established: visual, audio, motor and cognitive.

​

Visual disabilities relate to struggling to perceive visual cues, HUD and UI elements, reading small text and subtitles and potentially differentiating colours. These problems pertain to the blind, poor/low vision and colour vision deficiency, or colour-blind.

​

Audio disabilities relate to issues interpreting audio stimuli from the game, speakers and/or controller, with elements like voice acting, sound effects and music. These problems pertain to hard-of-hearing or being deaf.

​

Motor disabilities inhibit physical movement of fingers, hands, legs etc.  Conditions such as tendinitis, muscular dystrophy, arthritis, parkinson’s and/or repetitive strain injury (RSI). These conditions prevent buttons or combinations of buttons being pressed repeatedly or held for prolonged periods; resulting in difficulty playing and progressing.

​

Cognitive disabilities pertain to cognitive issues such as dyslexia, autism and epilepsy. A variety of game effects can cause discomfort; from shaking cameras to visual screen flashes and recurring images. Other problems arise from a lack of information, or the inability to retrace information.

​

Take a look at this screenshot from Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, a fighting game on the Switch.

This image depicts an 8-player scrap, with one player (myself) and 7 CPU players. There are four teams: red; blue; green and yellow, with 2 players on each team. But who is on what team?

​

The only way to know is through colour, either at the bottom of the screen or by the colour of the CPU tag above each fighter. Aside from my own name, which is clearly labelled above Sonic the Hedgehog, who is on what team? If you study it, you might get it; but this is a fighting game where quick reflexes and understanding the situation are paramount. Going through protonopia, deuternopia and tritanopia, it is really difficult to see who is on what team. Here is what the image is supposed to look like.

The red team and the green team are right next to each other, and near impossible to distinguish with protonopia or deuternopia. And with tritanopia, it’s harder to make out the green and blue teams instead. When in doubt, contrast blue with yellow/orange.

 

Have you ever tried to play Animal Crossing with the sound off? How easy is it to spot balloons floating by with presents when you can’t hear them? Have you ever played an action game which requires you to perform combos and string moves together? Is there a way to change the difficulty so you’re not punished if you’re not the best at the gameplay? Is there are way to reduce the complexity of inputs for the game to make it simpler for those who struggle to nimbly move their fingers? Can you review the controls  so you can remember how to play and not get game over? Or even remap the buttons to some that works for you?

These are all concerns that, if addressed, will help many gamers, both abled and disabled, feel included.  Anybody appreciates the option to remap buttons and hotkeys, or to be able to re-read some hints or tips on how to pull off attacks. Allowing those with disabilities to participate simply widens out your audience and your games’ appeal as it’s gone to the extra trouble to include them.

​

In order to compare these various titles, a checklist which reviewed different aspects of the game was created. Using different sources like BBC & Netflix’s subtitles guidelines and tools like Coblis Colourblind Simulator used to illustrate the Smash Brothers image shown previously, I was able to develop and trial a checklist which was then made more robust through iteration.

It explores different aspects of the game in question: such as the diversity and robustness of the options menus; how effectively the game’s events and rules are communicated to the player and how easy it is to repeat and re-learn important information.

Some areas only applied to certain disability groups, while others can be designed to help those with a disability from any group. Each game was allotted a number of points based on how well it did, and averages were recorded. These averages are then was what was used to compare and contrast different titles. Where necessary, points were removed for things that weren’t applicable to a particular title and the scores adjusted as appropriate. 

​

There were 25 games utilised in this study to create the results. The averages for each game were compared and analysed and graphs could be drafted to visually showcase the trends and patterns observed.

​

Looking at different groupings of genres, there was a pattern in every one. This platformers graph showcases the game Celeste having higher averages in visual, audio and motor than that of Rayman Legends and Sonic Mania. Shovel Knight scored the highest in cognitive out of the platformer games studied.

​

This graph showcases games that are action-orientated, along with RPG or survival/stealth elements. The most consistent averages across all four groups goes to the indie title Death Road to Canada; which is the red bar. Resident Evil Revelations 2 is the second most consistent. The best title for each group individually varies, with Spiderman scoring highest in visual and cognitive.

​

As well as genres, companies as a whole were examined by looking at the collective averages of their games used in the study.

Nintendo scored the highest average in visual and cognitive. Cognitive is the highest across all four companies, and motor is the most obvious low scoring group.

​

A similar graph was used to examine all the indie titles as a group. Every single indie title scored above 50% in visual and audio. Only one is below 50% in motor and two in cognitive. Death Road to Canada is once again the most consistent across all four groups in terms of variation, with Slime Rancher being second for most consistent. Shovel Knight is the highest scoring for cognitive while Celeste is highest for visual and audio. Bloons Tower Defence 6 scored the single highest score out of any game with its motor score at 89%.

​

These are just a few of the graphs used in the project, but there was a distinct pattern that, in general, indie titles were scoring higher than bigger-budget titles. Out of the disability groups, motor was the most noticeably lacking, with audio being next. Visual and cognitive are reasonably high across most titles.

​

There is no simple solution to making a game perfectly accessible, and each title’s unique gameplay and narrative elements present different problems and potential solutions. Never the less, there are some basic features that could help anybody no matter what kind of game they’re playing. Features like adjusting the sound mix with voices, music, sound effects and even UI elements; remapppable buttons to make it comfortable to play; the ability to review and replay tutorials and practise techniques safely and repeatedly and accounting for design choices that don’t solely rely on colour, or sound, or the rumble of the controller.

Small steps such as these being made during development will go a long way to helping bring in an otherwise alienated demographic. After all, computer games are meant to be fun, but it’s no fun if you can’t even play them properly. They are for everyone, so the more we can develop them with everyone in mind, the better for all.

​

I hope this video has been informative, and provoked some thoughts and concepts to ponder. Thank you for joining me for this graduate show.