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i was wondering if it might be good to separate this category into "game accessibility research" and "developers discussion" -- the igda game accessibility sig has been getting a few emails (not to the list but to me) from researchers and i think it would be good to have a section where we could maybe have a "top ten" things that need to be researched, pointers to researchers in this area, etc.
what do you think?
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I guess the question is what will separating the topic do to make it easier to attract good research to the topics of interest to this group? And secondarily, what types of requests have you seen that this forum might contribute to?
I think developer involvement is essential in getting accessibility built into game and other software. That's what we tried to do with the white paper "Gaming on a Collision Course". So if a change will encourage developer involvement and participation let's do it. However, I really don't see how separating the topic will do that.
Eleanor Robinson
7-128 Software
Hi, In my opinion, the questions for research could be posed in this section of the forum. The easiest would be to open a topic on research questions... What research questions would you like to post?
Eric Velleman
One of the things that came out clearly in the research work I did for Gaming on a Collision Course and that also was noted in the Game Accessibility Survey recently released by Eelke and his students is that many people do not think of themselves or identify themselves as gamers even though they spend time playing computer or console games. There is apparently a social negative attached to the term "gamer". This makes it very hard to have any confidence in the figures given about the number of gamers there are. When I did an informal questioning of some of my 65+ year old friends, it was clear that many of them played casual games on their computers but would never consider themselves gamers.
I think before we can have any idea about what accessibility accommodations need to be built into games to reach a target audience, we need to have a better handle on who is actually playing the games that are out there and who can't play the existing games because of lack of accommodations.
Eleanor Robinson
7-128 Software
I thought the Nielsen study was interesting there because they asked people if they played videogames, what platform, which room in the house and how long per day/week/month. The results are interesting. Below is a graph of the age groups and the percentage of time they spent from the total. Who says children play much more videogames than their parents? Numbers are from 2008.
For people who cannot see the graph:
Title of the graph: December 2008 Panel Composition by Total Minutes Played
Main contents: Of the total percentage of game players, the largest group is: male and female age 25 - 54 and 55 plus. They have the largest part of the game play minutes of the total age groups. Did I get the picture right here?
Eric
That is a very interesting picture. It just emphasizes the trend that gamers continue to play as they grow older. This year's ESA 2010 Essential Facts showed that the average game player age is 34 (up from last year) and that more (26%) gamers are over the age of 50 than are under the age of 18 (25%). The bulk of the gamers (49%) are between 18 and 49 years. I think it is still under-counting the number of gamers since many people won't respond that they are gamers unless questioned closely because they don't consider the types of games they play as video games.
Now if we can just get the developers to realize that in addition to the younger gamers that have disabilities, there are a lot of current customers that are aging and may develop hearing loss, reduced visual capability, and be less agile due to arthritis or stroke damage. These folks will need accommodations to continue to play games and that might just push the customer base up enough to make it attractive to the developers to include those accommodations!
Eleanor Robinson
7-128 Software
Interesting is the way Nintendo advertises its Gameboy DS for the elderly.. But general accessibility is still far away. Do you think all games can be accessible to all people one day?
I don't believe any one game can be accessible to everyone - there are accommodations required for one person that will interfere with another persons accommodation need. BUT that being said, some accommodation can be built into every piece of software - it is NOT rocket science! It just requires a willingness to do so and some evaluation of what changes will make the software accessible to the majority of people.
For example, it is not difficult to have adjustable type size - and that takes care of a lot of people with reduced vision - just not all! I do think there are answers for almost every person's needs - but the answer may be difficult to do and require a lot of adaptive equipment. But, for example, I don't understand why console developers don't make their buttons programmable to respond to the need of the individual. That is a relatively simple change that allows maximum control in the hands of the player.
Eleanor Robinson
7-128 Software
Console developers have certain rules to adherd to when creating games on consoles. As far as I understood it, some of these rules make fully programmable buttons allot harder to do, it makes it harder for a game to pass the Quality Assurance process. That is no excuse of course, but it explains why devolopers think its not a relativly simple change.
I do believe in accessibility for everyone. I don't know if we will ever achief it but I do think it will be possible. There are some accommodations that interfere with another persons accommodations but these situations are very rare and only come up during multiplayer (because otherwise you can just switch of the accommodations this particular player doesn't need), and even than, solutions have allready been thought of (multible headphone sets, multible screen even).
In theory every game could be made accessible if the information the screen and sound would outpute, would also be availabe in other ways, accommodated for a particular player, and if one of the availabe input methods would be suited for that particular player, plus the game should be downscalable to a difficulty (or/and speed) that destroys any "test element" and makes the game more of a toy than an actuall game.
If you cover those three area's, every game is accessible in theory (even to babies or people with multible severe disablities). In practice, this is very very hard though and a good start would just be those easy to fix things. like, indeed, programmable buttons for every game.
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