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Introduction

Hello! Welcome to my beloved research project in video game accessibility with a focus in blindness and visual impairments. Since this project was made in the U.S. as one of my final projects in college, the legal information and language was made for an U.S. American and English speaking audience. However, all the information I believe to be valuable to an global audience, in specific to video game developers or those interested in making technology more accesible like me.

Blindness and visual impairment are not the only disabilities that video game creators should account for, however in order to really dive deeper into the topic, I needed to focus on one section of accessibility–visual. On the other hand, this website was made for my class "Techonology for the Blind and Visually Impaired". I would love to one day come back and add more to this site for a wider focus like in hearing, mobility, and cognitive dissabilties. Once I have more time away from other projects and work to do more research, this website will get updated. Check back in the future!

To begin, I'd like to give a rundown of what to expect on this site and its various pages. On our header and footer menus, you'll find:

  • Video Accessibility Act

    • Page dedicated to information about the Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) of 2015 in the USA.

  • History of Game Dev

    • Page dedicated to share the super interesting history of video games and video game and their accessibility development.

  • Dev Guidelines

    • Page dedicated to share guidelines creators should consider in their development of a video game.

  • Gamer's Perspectives

    • Page dedicated to introduce some gamers without sight (GWS) to show who three gamers who benefit from increasing accessibility in video games. All three of the people I made entries of are accesibility advocates for their blind community and have websites (linked in the page) where more of their content can be found talk about their experiences and work. I think it is important to know and listen to the people you are designing for and instead of just reading about it second-hand from a sighted-person like me. All featured gamers are only a few of the many that exist of course.

  • Resources for Dev

    • Page dedicated to a collection of accessibility resources for developers gathered by the XRAccessibility Project which is an initiative driven by the XR Association and XR Access.[13]

  • Bibliography

    • Page dedicated to house my bibliography and all the resources I used in the making of this site. You can check them out if you want to learn more.

I appreciate any feedback! If you see any errors that you wish to report, please use the link to contact form.


Vocabulary

  • AD - Audio Description: Audio description is audio-narrated descriptions of a television program's key visual elements. These descriptions are inserted into natural pauses in the program's dialogue. Audio description makes TV programming more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.[30]

  • ADA - American with Disabilities Act: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities.[31]

  • Audio Cues – Audio cues give players information about in-game events.[32]

  • Audio Games – An audio game is a game that consists (only/mostly) of sound. Visuals are not key or needed to play the game.[33]

  • CVAA - Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act: On October 8, 2010, President Obama signed the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) into law. The CVAA updates federal communications law to increase the access of persons with disabilities to modern communications.[1]

  • FCC - Federal Communications Commission: The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.[34]

  • GWS - Gamer Without Sight: A term that Sightless Kombat uses and will be used in this website as well. SlightlessKombat uses it as – "legal blindness", often just shortened to being "blind" can and often does include usable and/or residual vision.[12]

  • Optical Character Recognition - OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is the procedure that transforms a text image into a text format that can be read by computers.[35]

  • Quick Time Event - Quick time events, or QTEs, are prompts in video games that require you to perform a certain button action with little warning, or else suffer negative consequences. They usually appear during cutscenes, when the player would otherwise think that they don't need to do anything.[36]

  • Universal Design - Universal design is the process of creating products that are accessible to people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities, and other characteristics.[37]

Vocabulary Proposed by Paul Cairns, Christopher Power, et al. [28]

  • Access Options
    • Input Options
    • Control Options
    • Presentation Options
    • Output Options
  • Challenge Options
    • Training Options
    • Progress Options
    • Social Options
    • Moderation Options

Why Video Games?

This will be the only page with a glimpse into my mind, so I do want to share that I do not call myself a gamer. I wasn't allowed to play video games growing up and later never had the funds to afford any PC, console, or games to play. Now, I only play whenever I'm invited to because I love to read books more for entertainment. So, why would I consider this topic to be important? Simply because I am big advocate in accesibility and creating inclusive spaces. My field in computer science and techonology brings me an extra passion to make accessibility a standard anywhere that technology exists or could exist to make it so.

I mentioned I love to read books for fun and to relax. On that note, I believe everyone deserves to be able to have access to the entertainment, recreational activities, books, or anything that brings them joy or a healthy sense escapism. Books were my saving grace growing up, stories that could take me far away from my circumstances. Video games act as the same vehicle to feel more grounded and have fun for a lot of people including disabled gamers. As an ex-athlete, I am also aware of the fiery passion and exhilarating glee that competition creates in a person, sure sometimes it can get frustrating, but video games are a safe place where people can try and try again. Getting the chance to try one more time is what a lot of us wish for. Video games not only can be graphically beautiful, have intricate stroylines, but also bring people together.

Board games, video games, and sports all have that magic where there is always space for someone else to join either participating or watching to cheer a player on. Making inaccesible video games and technology is like not letting someone join in on that magic.

Throughout the various pages on this website, you'll get the chance to read more on what the acts in the U.S. expects, what video game techonology is capable of in current day, and learn about guidlines that are reccomended to be implemented. But to quickly summarize the main message here it is like this:

All video games can't be fully accessible to every disability out there. Making your video game accessible does not mean making it fully accessible since 1) techonology is not there yet 2) sometimes not achievable. Making your video game accessible does not take away anything from the goals and experiences of the game, rather it adds to it for more people to be able to experience them too. What matters is that there exist options. Take a minute to learn about audio games, mainstream accesisble games that work for some disabilities but maybe not for others, what are now the common practices in developement, and what are some things to consider for visuals? Being open to learning and being kind is what can make a difference.

Sharing My Playlist

Building website and doing this research has been very important to me. For the past two months I've been working on this project while listening to music to keep me awake during late nights, but also motivating me. For me, music is a tool I use to make sense the world around me and my experiences. I wanted to share a playlist that is not really about this exact topic since songs and music is always relative and personal to the listener. However, it is a playlist I made of songs I listened to while working on this research and I feel can express part of my personal relationship with disability and accessibility.