Accessibility, usability, inclusiveness: video games for everyone?

This article was written by WTF’UX, whom we invited to our newsletter in May 2023! We warmly invite you to discover her work on her Youtubechannel and to support her on her Patreon. Happy reading!

Everyone is different. A simple premise, yet one that tends to be quickly forgotten. But different in what way exactly?

Our gender, our physical and intellectual skills, our education, but also our sexual orientation, our origins, our culture, our phobias, our disabilities, our illnesses, our traumas and so on…

And yet, despite these differences, the majority of products and services available are not automatically designed to be accessible to the greatest number of people.

Good news, however! Society is gradually evolving, and numerous measures are being taken to ensure accessibility in the broadest sense of the term. From PMR norms for buildings to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, a standardization body) for the web, not forgetting the evolution of labor laws in the 2000s to promote gender diversity, numerous actions are being implemented and the subject is being taken seriously.

It’s important to clarify at this point that when I talk about accessibility in the broadest sense, I’m actually talking about three aspects of it:

• Pure accessibility: this deals with the discriminatory aspects of the user experience for people with disabilities. An accessible website, for example, is one that any person with a disability can perceive, understand, navigate or interact with.
• Usability: the design of products or services that are efficient and satisfying, practical and logical, and that offer a good user experience in short.
• Inclusivity: this is about diversity and guaranteeing the participation of everyone as far as possible, regardless of education, culture, age, sexual orientation, etc.

The three go hand in hand.

But now that we’ve said all that: in concrete terms, what’s being done in terms of video games?

I. COVID-19, a catalyst for accessibility

The importance of accessibility is no myth.

When we often hear that“after all, accessibility only affects a small group of users”, this is not true. Around 16% of the world’s population is affected – that’s 1.3 billion people. And within this 16%, we’re only talking about disabilities, and therefore the need for pureaccessibility. If we add usability and inclusivity, the percentage climbs much higher, since it concerns everyone, including marginalized people who would like to be represented in video games!

Speaking of “everyone”, let’s go back to disabilities for a minute, because I’m sure you don’t really feel concerned, even though you could be. We’re talking about disabilities here:

• Visual: this includes color-blind people as well as the visually impaired (impaired vision or blindness).
• Motor: includes disabilities linked to arthritis, tendonitis, sprains, Parkinson’s disease, muscular atrophy or any other motor impairment
• Auditory: for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Cognitive: disabilities linked to epilepsy, dyslexia or the game’s difficulty curve
• Neurological: for individuals with neurodivergent conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, who may experience difficulties in social interaction and communication, particularly in multiplayer games.

It’s a vast field. And these disabilities can be permanent, temporary or situational. For example:

• I have a broken arm and can only play with one hand.
• Or everyone sleeps at home, so I don’t have headphones and have to play without sound.

So we can all be affected at some point in our lives!

So far, I think we’re all in agreement that making a game accessible does indeed seem important. Well, despite these high statistics, prioritizing and integratingaccessibility as an essential element of game design is not yet a well-established habit. In fact,accessibility really started to make waves when COVID 19 was first confined, bringing a large number of non-gamers into the video game world. It’s amazing how much the COVID-19 period actually got things moving!

We’d already seen games like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End [2016] provide a wide range ofaccessibility options following advice from gamers with disabilities, or Bordelands 2 [ 2014] add a color-blind mode as part of a game update. And it goes back even further with the 1950 arcade game Bertie the Brain, with its AI accessible to everyone regardless of age, skill or health.

But it never went much further than that. In any case, it hasn’t motivated all the industry’s big studios to follow suit and impose accessibility as a rule of game design.

Except that Covid-19 has come and gone, and more and more gamers have pointed out the accessibility problems associated with games: people want to PLAY! And they’re making it heard. Whether for the sole purpose of selling more copies or out of pure empathy for gamers: it doesn’t matter. The fact is, the giants of the industry are taking an interest and are tending to make games ever more accessible, inclusive and ergonomic (usability). And here we’re talking about games like The Last of Us: Part I or God of War, which have made their respective second opuses all the more spectacular. Celeste [2018] also reshuffled the cards in the world of independent games by offering an assisted mode, proving to the industry that despite having far fewer resources than a AAA, it’s possible to offer accessibility options.

But what have they really done? What does an accessible, inclusive and ergonomic game look like?

II. Accessibility in all its forms

In the video game industry, the job of accessibility designer is not yet well defined, and can vary from studio to studio. Whatever the exact job title, the aim is to identify the various points on which the game could be made more accessible and inclusive (ergonomics being specific to UX designers) and tointegrate thought on these three aspects as effectively as possible throughout the production of the video game. From the difficulty of the gameplay to the comprehensibility of the design, from the diversity of the characters to the ease of understanding the HUD, designers need to ensure that as many players as possible feel involved in the game, can empathize/identify with the characters and can simply play.

And to do this, they’re going to focus on different aspects of the game. Shall I show you around?

A. The interfaces

Contrast between text and background, text size, choice of font, amount of text displayed on screen, position of subtitles, screen reader for the visually impaired, flexibility in the controls and colors used: there are a number of rules to be respected to ensure that interfaces are as accessible as possible. These include :

▶️ Subtitles, text and legibility

Are you unable to play with sound for some situational reason? Are you deaf or hard of hearing? Volume options and subtitling are the basics. And yet, in the video game world, no one spread the word until relatively late. This is one of the reasons why not all games have the same way of displaying subtitles, even though there are simple rules.

Subtitles are great. But now please, studios, make them legible! Text in a game, whether it’s a title, subtitle or description, must use a font, size and formatting that’s easy to read by default. The contrast between the text and the UI (User Interface) in the background must be sufficiently high.

And here again, I’m only talking aboutopacity, but there are games that have even decided to display text blocks as subtitles, or that make the text scroll automatically. HELP! Keep it short, concise and easy to read.

❌ DON’T

✅ DOS

And what else? More and more games are allowing players to adjust these size and font parameters in the options. And that’s really important.

▶️ Clarity of the elements

While every industry is accustomed to using color to convey a message, color-blind people won’t have the advantage of understanding as easily as expected. Just look at the example of Bioshock: red, orange and green are similar in the images below. It’s impossible for a color-blind person to see the difference. That’s why it’s so important to ensure that as much information as possible is accompanied by text or any other means of understanding its function other than by color.

👁️ Color-blind vision

👁️ No visual impairment

Another option is to ensure that the colors used in these interfaces are distinguishable from one another by all types of color blindness, or to offer players the option of :

• Set the colors of their choice: complicated and time-consuming, however, when many elements are based on color.
• Propose color filters according to the type of color blindness and apply dedicated color palettes automatically.

Another option is to ensure that the colors used in these interfaces are distinguishable from one another by all types of color blindness, or to offer players the option of :

• Set the colors of their choice: complicated and time-consuming, however, when many elements are based on color.
• Propose color filters according to the type of color blindness and apply dedicated color palettes automatically

▶️ Generally speaking

It’s not a good idea to communicate information using a single visual or audible indication. Each element needs to be signaled by several means. This is the case with footsteps in Fortnite: players have both a visual and an aural indicator.

B. The game’s difficulty

We tend to forget it, but offering several difficulties in a game means being accessible and inclusive. That’s right! Which just goes to show that we’re all in this together.

Some people want to play the game in story mode, others want a challenge. We all have our own motivations, and we’re not all looking for the same thing in a game.

As we can see from the example of Binding of Isaac, the community has created mods to suit their needs. In particular, there’s a mod that makes it possible to display item descriptions all the time, taking away from the difficult aspect of the game; testing, risking ruining your run and starting again when you’re not sure you’ll remember what all the items you’ve discovered on previous runs do.

Offering a fairly wide choice of difficulty levels and including comprehensible and effective tutorials at the start of the game to help players along is important and will enable more and more people to enjoy the game.

However, some publishers/studios think about difficulty specifically in terms of the experience they want players to have. They see changing the difficulty as a blow to the overall experience of the game and a distortion of it. We’ll come back to this later.

C. Control mapping

Generally speaking, these are essentialaccessibility options for people with motor disabilities.

QTEs (Quick Time Events), for example, are the first elements that players will want to control: spamming a button until the event is taken into account can be a real ordeal for someone with a motor disability. It’s essential to have an option that lets you – for example – just hold down the button or press it once for the QTE to take effect.

Being able to activate or deactivate haptic feedback or change all the settings for the game’s controls is very important. Many people are unable to use certain controls, such as the L2/R2 triggers, which require a hold (or LT/RT on Xbox controllers) and are more complicated to use than L1/R1 buttons (or LB/RB on Xbox controllers).

D. The triggers warning

One of the most talked-about subjects is trigger warnings. And too few games warn us about the sensitive or traumatic subjects they deal with!

At the same time, it’s difficult. Imagine a game where the story gradually leads you to discover a character’s traumatic past, or a horror game that spoilers you before you see the horrific content. It’s frustrating for gamers who want to be surprised.

But it’s even more disturbing for those who, on the contrary, have absolutely no desire to confront subjects that have traumatised them or to deal with phobias.

Doki Doki Literature Club is an example of a game where you can see the full list of sensitive subjects to be covered. It’s pretty handy, but it doesn’t solve the problem prior to purchase (unless you’re on Steam, and at the bottom of the page you can see some additional information about the content of the game defined as ‘mature’).

For the moment, the only viable and complete alternative that I know of is the “Can I play that ’ site, which lets you search for a trigger warning and see all the games that contain it, or search for a game and see the trigger warnings it contains. Pretty handy before you buy!

Can I Play That?

E. The diversity of the characters

Seeing characters of all genders, ages, backgrounds, disabilities and sexual orientations in a video game is important!

Firstly, because it creates a much more inclusive and welcoming community of gamers. But also, and above all, because everyone wants to see themselves – and above all recognise themselves – in a playable character! And if that character is always represented in the same way, that excludes quite a few people… Hauntya will tell you more about this than I can in her article on the subject [The need for diversity and representation].

The good news is that, like everything else, it’s changing. Of course, there are still some bitter and far-from-open-minded people who turn it into extreme and malicious debates on Twitter, but it’s evolving despite what they say, and that’s good!

I could talk to you about the female characters and the LGBTQIA+ community, who are increasingly represented in games, and all the new diversity of stories they bring, a real breath of fresh air. But it’s not just in the playable characters predefined by the studios. Inclusivity can also be found in the details of character customisation! Cyberpunk 2077, for example, allows you to change your voice and gender as you wish, breaking away from the usual binary ‘male/female’ choices. Or in Forza Horizon V, where you can add prosthetic limbs to your character. And finally, Overcooked, which allows wheelchair users to recognise and identify with Chef Racoon himself in his armchair (my favourite character, which I select all the time, by the way).

There are many other subjects that I unfortunately can’t cover in this article – at the risk of turning it into a book – such as modifying the game’s controls, adapting the gameplay and the HUD for the visually impaired or deaf, navigation aids or options for ‘motion sickness’ etc. There are many videos (including those by GMTK) and articles or websites (including the Xbox one with its rules on accessibility) that I’ve put at the bottom of the article for those who want to know all about them. There are a number of videos (including those by GMTK) and articles or websites (including the Xbox website with its accessibility rules) that I’ve included at the bottom of the article for those of you who would like all the details. But the important thing to remember is that things are changing and there are more and more rules of good conduct that studios are starting to follow.

However, even if all these rules are now clearly identified, studio constraints still come into play and it’s much more complicated than that.

III. Studio restrictions

BECAUSE YES! There are constraints that are important to remember. I’m saying this because before I worked in the industry, I had the annoying tendency to play the finished work inspector and my favourite phrase was “but why didn’t they think of that? It was so obvious! – but because they don’t have a budget or unlimited time, my dear!

Although the subject is becoming increasingly popular and has its place in game design,accessibility, inclusivity** andusability (UX) are not always given priority. There are two reasons for this:

▶️ The gaming experience

Game designers have a defined ambition for a game: that it be cosy and chill, that it be challenging, that it be scary, etc. The problem with accessibility is that its very nature lies in making any game accessible to more and more people, and therefore in most cases modifying the desired experience.

The problem with accessibility is that its very nature lies in making any game accessible to more and more people, and therefore in most cases modifying the desired experience.

To take The Last of Us as an example, the desired experience was based on violence and trauma, so the aim was to create a tense and uncomfortable atmosphere. Creating anaccessibility option to make the game simpler, enemies more forgiving or less aggressive, displaying sound effects, simplifying the inventory, all have an impact on the desired experience. But they have found compromises.

And some games are reluctant to do so. One example is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice [2019], which talked about including an easy mode in the game to allow more players to enjoy the story without the punishing side. Unfortunately, some fans complained and refused to see Sekiro offer an easy mode, despite requests from accessibility advocates. As a result, the studio was forced not to add this option for fear of disappointing fans…

▶️ Budget and time

Two other constraints come into play: the budget allocated and production time.

Time and money are two constraints that force production to make choices. And althoughaccessibility is taken into account and is an integral part of the game design thinking process (this is the case in the studio where I work), often when it comes to prioritising between a game mechanic or an advanced accessibility option, it’s the game mechanic that takes precedence. And the reason is simple: if there’s accessibility without having a mechanic for which this accessibility option will be used, it’s useless. And it’s the same problem with UX design: what’s the point of doing extremely high-quality onboarding if you’re going to board mechanics that don’t exist?

These days, I think it’s important and vital to remember that even with all the goodwill in the world, without a budget or unlimited time, it’s complicated to respect all the rules – even if it’s crucial to have them in mind and to aim for the best possible application of them.

For example, The Last of Us 2, which has made great strides in terms of accessibility, with a multitude of options and quick presets for visual, motor and hearing disabilities, took more than five years to develop with 2,100 people. That’s a lot of work.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push the issue! On the contrary: the more we talk about it, the more the environment evolves. You just have to bear in mind that things can’t change radically overnight, but they do evolve.

IV. A bright future?

Despite studio constraints and a gamer community that is sometimes a little too reticent, the future of accessibility, inclusivity and usability in video games remains more than promising!

With Microsoft Xbox providing accessibility rules and accessible controllers, and Sony following in its competitor’s footsteps by providing a website listing the accessibility options for each of its titles, the future looks bright.

There are even real collaborations between studios and marginalised communities to get their feedback directly and be able to design according to their needs, and awards dedicated to innovation in accessibility.

Diversity within games is also extremely important, bringing a breath of fresh air to the industry by telling stories outside the usual framework or adopting new codes that are different from those we’ve seen over and over again. Diversity gives us all the chance to recognise ourselves in a playable character. The variousaccessibility features also apply to us all, offering customisation options to suit everyone, from the person with a broken arm who can only play with one hand for a while, to the blind person, and all other types of disability.

In short,accessibility,inclusivity andusability are three objectives that concern us all and enable as many people as possible to enjoy video games. And it’s beautiful!

Food for thought

• *Web accessibility Initiatives : https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/fr*
• *Game Accessibility Guidelines : https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/basic/*
• *Accessibility myths : https://a11ymyths.com/*
• *SIG Top Ten: https://igda-gasig.org/how/sig-top-ten/*
• ***Can I play that : https://caniplaythat.com/***
• *Xbox accessibility guidelines : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/accessibility/guidelines*
• GMTK videos for every type of disability :