![]() Researchers at the Wheeling Jesuit University recently discovered that playing sports games or fighting games helps distract children and young adults suffering from chronic pain (The Edmonton Journal, Feb 13th 2006). There are both social and financial reasons why game developers should think about making their products accessible.įor children and young adults who have disabilities that range from mild to severe, video games can offer a number of benefits. In the context of video games, adding accessibility means making a title usable to someone with one of these disabilities. Cognitive - Learning impairments and reasoning challenges, including dyslexia.Mobility - Wrist, arm, leg, and hand impairments. ![]() Speech - Speech impairments, language differences.Vision - Blindness, inability to distinguish colors, blurred Vision, and so on.A person with Parkinson's disease can use one touch dialing to make it easier to make a telephone call.Īccessibility features generally tend to serve one of five types of disabilities: For instance, someone with a visual impairment can use the contrast settings on a television to make the screen easier to see. Sometimes, regular features of a product end up being features that can help people with impairments. ![]() A hand rail on a flight of stairs allows a mobility-impaired person to climb them more easily. (" The Market for Accessible Technology: The Wide Range of Abilities and Its Impact on Computer Use," Microsoft Corporation) Being able to turn up a payphone's volume allows people with mild hearing loss to use them. Among US computer users who range from 18 to 64 years old, 57% (74.2 million) are likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology due to disabilities and impairments that may impact computer use. However, accessibility features aren't designed just for those with the most severe disabilities. This is because these sorts of accessibility features stand out and are used by those with obvious disabilities. Often, when people think of accessibility, they think of things like wheelchair ramps and closed captioning on television. The State of Accessibility in the Games Industry.This article is for game content developers and producers who want to reach the accessibility community market by adding basic accessibility features to help people with disabilities or impairments. These gamers come from the accessibility community a community of people with disabilities, as well as those who care about their welfare. ![]() But there is another audience, eager to take part in these games as well. I'll add it to my group (the walking simulator fan club) because it's a genuinely interesting concept, but the reality is that by chapter 7, the novelty has run out, the (extremely) hard audio puzzle start (take 5 steps and you live, take 6 and you die type thing), and I didn't have the motivation to finish this - yet.Ĭheck the demo first and ask yourself 'do I want to play this for several hours on end', also note they probably need to patch the dog section as it's impossible to get right even after 100+ tries.Game publishers and developers love to focus on features that will get their titles noticed by the mainstream gaming community, such as graphics and audio. The supporting cast varies from solid (the ex-gf) to terrible or simply recycled (passer by, gangsters, etc). For starters, the voice acting from the lead is very, very poor - a killer in a game that has no graphics to speak of. Sadly, it's extremely repetitive, and the gameplay is very far from perfect. And it made me realize that no matter what headphones you have, unless they placed drivers at the front and back of the earcups you'll never have 'true' echo-location using stereo.īut the purpose of a review is to establish if "this a good game". It also gave me a dozen ideas of products to help blind people out there. The concept is simple: you navigate 'blind' and the end of each short chapter you get a visual representation of how you moved. I've been playing video games for 40 years and this was a truly original experience.
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