Accessibility and Gaming

I was talking to Lisa Sheftman today from the Disability Resource Center at Stanford. She was telling me about disability tools like nextup.com and the 508 compliance law that make it easier for the diasbled to use technology. We got to talking about ideas for accesible gaming. In the end I believe making games more accessible could improve the experience for non-disabled and the disabled. Some may think it's not worth it to build interfaces for the disabled, because games are visual. Yes it's a challenge, but coming up with an innovative design is worth recapturing a sizable market.
There are three population factors that make accessible gaming a significant market:

• The disabled make up 10% of the US population.


• Baby boomers are growing older and may need devices to help them access information.


• Improvements in healthcare enable people to live longer even if they are medically frail.

In short, technical dependence will increase and drive the need for accessible gaming. Some ideas: You could make a game more accessible to a blind person using haptic devices to allow them to feel the room and sound to give them a sense of depth. Other changes might include larger fonts, bigger controller buttons, sign-language avatars, and text to speech. Would a blind person make a better player? Yes possibly. The brain is excellent at parsing audio signals, making blind players serious contenders. Finally the government mandates 508 accesibility for all technology sold to federal agencies. The government is the largest consumer of serious games. Bottom line: get ready, get accessible.