The gaming world is increasingly aware of the importance of allowing anyone to play any game, even if the person has a disability. An adaptation that can require sacrifices from developers, but which, if well thought out, is not as complicated as it seems. Preparation and listening are the watchwords for successful accessibility according to the people interviewed by The duty.
When it comes to accessibility, the industry has benefited from “blank stones” in recent years, explains Olivier Nourry, co-founder of the Games Accessibility Hub, a French company that helps game creators around the world find tools. Adapted controllers created by Xbox and PlayStation and games like The Last of Us Part II (2020) — accessible to people with visual impairments — focused on the needs of gamers with disabilities.
Whether it’s consulting with disabled players or developing different parameters, making a game accessible “requires certain resources,” Mr. Nourry admits. Resource requirements that are greatly reduced if accessibility concerns arrive early in the development of a game, according to all the experts interviewed by The duty.
Vincent Presseau, founder of the independent Quebec studio Carcajou, gives the example of a game where the character would blend into the background due to a lack of contrast between the two elements. A person with reduced visibility could have more difficulty playing. “If I have to change the textures that I have already created, it will definitely cost more. But if I already had accessibility in mind at the beginning when creating the textures, it doesn’t change anything because they have to be created anyway,” he explains.
The best example of this approach is the Montreal studio Shishi. Its founder, Frédéric McNamara, suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which causes muscle degeneration, making access to video games requiring finer motor skills difficult. It was with the aim of creating “ambitious games that are accessible to all” that he founded Les studios Shishi.
Accessibility “is the first question we ask ourselves,” he says. The studios’ first game, Shishi: Timeless Preludeis played in turns and with as few buttons as possible “so players can take the time they need.” Most games use a lot of buttons and combinations between them, but at a minimum, the ability to customize your controls should be included in all games, McNamara notes.
Difficulty and accessibility
Fred Fortin, who has arthritis and multiple sclerosis — which makes it difficult to grip a controller with his right hand — consistently prioritizes the easy function to be able to play. “There are games I would like to play, but they require too much rapid action and I’m not able to do it. When it’s easier, I can take my time and I’m able to play.”
Simon Phaneuf, who has cerebral palsy that mainly affects his hands, has in a way come to terms with the loss of more difficult games. “I realized that there are games that aren’t for me, and that’s okay too,” he says. That doesn’t stop him from dreaming of a future where he could play them. “I know that developers can sometimes be caught between two stools and don’t want to distort their game, but it could be interesting to find a compromise so that the game is more accessible.”
Ancestors: The Humankind Odysseydeveloped by Quebec studio Panache, does not allow you to adjust the difficulty level. According to Étienne Beaulieu, director of user experience, the desire was to create a game where players learn the basics of evolution, frustration and pitfalls included. Even if this meant not making the game accessible to people for whom fine motor skills are an obstacle, features that do not affect the difficulty, such as sound visualization, were created.
Olivier Nourry of the Games Accessibility Hub confirms that the relationship between difficulty and accessibility is a “very controversial” topic in the gaming world. According to him, as long as a game is played alone, everyone’s experience should be customizable. It’s when games become multiplayer or competitive that problems can arise.
“It must not create an advantage for certain people,” he says. He cites the example of shooting games. Fortnite, in which a function allows to visualize the sounds and their origin with icons appearing on a circle surrounding the player. A setting designed for the hearing impaired, but which is used by many players to gain a certain advantage.
Both Fred Fortin and Simon Phaneuf had to cross multiplayer shooter games off their list. “I’m going to play them more for recreational purposes than competitively because competitively, it’s impossible for me, people press too quickly. I get tired of them quickly,” the latter says.
Make it easily accessible
Timothée Lansiaux, who co-founded the Games Accessibility Hub with Olivier Nourry, sums up that good accessibility “requires above all knowledge and a little curiosity”. “The main obstacle is the lack of knowledge and perhaps a lack of awareness of disability.”
One of these major misunderstandings? The fact that many people live with a disability and that the extent of the disability varies enormously from one person to another. “A large part of the population lives with a disability. And every developer wants their game to be played by as many people as possible,” says Olivier Nourry.
In this desire to reach as many people as possible, independent studios are not necessarily at a disadvantage. “Their big advantage is that they often have smaller teams. Therefore, it’s less complicated to organize. Often, the games are also smaller, so there is better control over the game,” explains David Tisserand, head of accessibility at Ubisoft.
On the contrary, larger studios, like Ubisoft, have greater resources and “every advance we make on a game, we can use it later on each game of the company,” says Mr. Tisserand. “Accessibility does not come overnight, it is a cumulative process. It will only improve over the years,” states Timothée Lansiaux.