Game accessibility

International Game Developers Association

Game Accessibility can be defined as the ability to play a game even when functioning under limiting conditions. Limiting conditions can be functional limitations, or disabilities - such as blindness or arthritis.

There is an estimated 180 million people worldwide who have a visual impairment. Of these, between 40 and 45 million persons are blind (World Health Organization, 2001). Add to these people with hearing impairment or deafness, motoric disability and many more, and you realise that accessibility is big business.

More than 40 years has passed since the first computer game was developed (referring to the general assumption that Spacewar from 1962 was the first computer game). Yet we still have the same implied prerequisites to play a game: full sight, hearing, cognitive, and motor functions. In short, the game industry has ended up excluding many (or most) disabled, potential gamers. Compared with the web industry (only about 10 years old), the mainstream game industry has done very little (if anything) in the accessibility area.

The Game Accessibility SIG was formed to change this. While we know it is a huge task for any game developer to make games accessible we feel that by collaborating with the rest of the community we can make some incredible strides toward developing accessibilty methods for games.