Gamasutra.com - Making Video Games Accessible: Business Justifications and Design Considerations


				\|\|\|\|

By Brannon Zahand
[Author's Bio]
Gamasutra
September 20, 2006

Making Video Games Accessible: Business Justifications and Design Considerations

Introduction
Importance?
The Need
Visual Impairment
Auditory Impairment
Mobility Impairment
Vocal / Conclusion

	Latest Letters to the Editor: Perpetual Layoffs by Alexander Brandon [09.21.2007] Casual friendliness in MMO's by Colby Poulson [09.20.2007] Scrum deals and 'What is Scrum?' by Tom Plunket [08.29.2007] [Submit Letter] [View All...]

Features

Making Video Games Accessible: Business Justifications and Design Considerations

PreviousNext

Article Start

Auditory Impairments

"Memories of Half-Life return to haunt us as yet another technological masterpiece [Halo] is useless to the deaf gamer... Let's hope, no pray! that if Halo 2 ever sees the light of day that it will be fully subtitled."—www.DeafGamers.com

The next most prevalent form of impairments that can affect game play is auditory impairments. ("UCSF: Disabilities Statistics Center," Abstract 5, University of California, San Francisco). In the U.S. alone, over 28 million people are affected by some sort of hearing impairment. While hearing impairments are often associated with age, 17 out of every 1,000 children under the age of 18 are affected with a hearing impairment ("Statistics about Hearing Disorders, Ear Infections, and Deafness," National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders). When one considers that the gamers of today are getting older and losing their hearing at an ever-increasing rate, it is clear that demand for audio accessibility will only grow.

What Halo might look like with full closed-captioning.

To help you understand auditory impairment issues, imagine that:

You Are A Gamer	And You Are In This Scenario
With normal hearing	You don't want to disturb anyone so you play with the sound muted but you can't play the game because the directions are only given in audio.
	You are gaming at a loud party but you can't tell that you are under fire because you can't hear the gun shots.
With a hearing impairment	The game has a lot of ambient noise and you can't hear the verbal instructions given to you.
	The audio commentary is so soft, you can't hear it, even in a quiet room.
Who is deaf	All of your objectives are given to you in audio and you can't determine what you are supposed to do.
	All of the storyline is given verbally, and you can't follow along.

With some relatively minor work, you can make your game usable and enjoyable for gamers with normal hearing and for gamers who have an auditory impairment.

Close caption all dialogs. This includes in-game content and cinematics. Give the gamer the ability to turn these captions on and off.
When a sound effect delivers vital information, provide a textual or tactile (vibration) mechanism for feedback as well. For example, if normally a bomb in your game makes a faster beeping noise close to its explosion, provide a visual indicator (such as a time bar) that also allows the gamer to know how much time is left before the explosion.
If your game supports online play, give gamers the option to send text messages as well as use their voice to deliver information amongst team members and other online players. A headset is not useful to an individual who can't hear and, more and more, players are looking to play with other individuals with whom they can communicate and strategize online.

PreviousNext

Article Start