WE ALL PLAY GAMES

From indies to blockbusters, developers are striving to include disabled players now more than ever

- Ruth Cassidy

Last year’s instalment of The Game Awards celebrated the first Innovation in Accessibility award. This was alongside numerous other events recognizing accessibility for the first time, and dedicated efforts like the Video Game Accessibility Awards. It’s a topic that’s more visible than it’s ever been, but does this reflect the real state of gaming today?

While we might talk about some games as being ‘accessible to new players’ or an ‘accessible entry point to a niche genre’, accessibility here means access for disabled people—who make up 20% of working age adults in the UK, and 10.4% in the US. So while mainstream games awards may have their flaws—rewarding some of the industry’s darker aspects like crunch and abusive management—it’s still meaningful when they recognize efforts to remove the barriers that might exclude us.

Accessibility doesn’t only make things better for disabled players, however. David Tisserand, Ubisoft’s senior accessibility manager, shared on Twitter that around 95% of players leave subtitles on when it’s the default setting, and around 75% turn them on in the options at least once. This is a significantly higher percentage of the population than those who have hearing loss. Over email, Tisserand says, “For us, accessibility is about removing unintentional barriers so that as many players as possible can enjoy our games.” And concerning subtitles, that includes people with difficulty processing audio, noisy roommates, babies they can’t wake up, crunchy Doritos—the list goes on.