While the accessibility of traditional media and software and web accessibility have been widely researched, there is still a paucity of studies focusing on game accessibility, despite the economic and cultural influence of the game industry. To date, interest in game accessibility has stemmed mainly from industry professionals and a handful of academics, mainly those with a computer science back-ground. The work of the Game Accessibility Special Interest Group (GA-SIG)98 at the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) deserves a special mention. This group gathers game designers, producers, engineers, and academics who are interested in improving game accessibility, which they define as “the ability to play a game even when functioning under limiting conditions. Limiting conditions can be functional limitations, or disabilities - such as blindness, deafness, or mobility limitations (IGDA Game Access SIG 2010). In their mission statement, the Game Accessibility SIG affirms that:
Computer games are an important cultural and quality of life issue. By collaborating with the rest of the game development community the GA-SIG intends to develop methods of making all game genres universally accessible to all, regardless of disability. In order to do this we will promote education of game developers in accessibility design, tax incentives for accessible game developers, corporate sponsorship and accessibility ratings.
The GA-SIG's view of accessibility is therefore a broad one, as their objective is to make video games playable for everyone, including younger, older, casual, and novice players, who may find playing a game challenging, although they pay special attention to gamers with disabilities. They also aim to promote an accessibility ratings system, similar to the PEGI and the ESRB age ratings systems, providing information about how accessible a game is, i.e. whether it includes a tutorial mode, subtitles, whether it can be played with one hand, etc. The GA-SIG have published the white paper Accessibility in Games: Motivations and Approaches (IDGA Game Access SIG 2004), which provides information and guidelines for designing accessible games. It must be stressed that often in the game industry the term accessibility is used in this broader sense to refer to designing games that are intuitive and do not require a steep learning curve so that they can be played by all types of players, from different age groups and levels of ability. Many of the articles in the specialized industry journal Gamasutra use the term "accessibility" with this meaning.99 Nintendo has always been one of the main advocates of this broad concept of "accessibility", developing intuitive and easy-to-learn hardware and software for all ages, including the Wii console and the games in the Touch Generation series, such as the Brain Training (2005-) franchise. Recently, Nintendo included a new accessibility feature in their well-known New Super Mario Bros. game (2009) for the Wii console that allows players who cannot progress past a difficult part of the game to switch to automatic mode. The game then completes the level for them and they can resume playing when they are ready. This accessibility feature is useful for novice and casual players, as well as players with
cognitive and physical disabilities. Some hardcore gamers objected to it, claiming that this kind of built-in ‘cheat' feature defeats the purpose of gaming, although it can also be argued that it is an optional feature that does not necessarily have to be used. Given that the difficulty levels are sometimes adjusted during the localization process in different locales (see Chapter 4), Nintendo's approach can be seen as handing over such decisions to the players themselves. At the same time, Nintendo also created an issue with left-handed players with its games requiring them to use their right hand for the stylus of DS/3DS and Wii U games (Tinnelly, personal communication, 15 February 2012), demonstrating that accessibility issues can be easily overlooked by developers and publishers, who tend to focus on mainstream users.
As mentioned earlier, one of the key differences between accessibility to traditional media and accessibility to new digital media lies in the interaction between the user and the medium. As electronic, interactive, and audiovisual media, the accessibility challenges posed by video games differ from those posed by other business-oriented applications or websites, as games’ primary function is to entertain users. A video game player must complete several tasks and accomplish different missions in order to achieve a given goal, while enjoying the whole process.
If a game is too difficult, this is likely to affect players' progress negatively, leading them to abandon the game without finishing it. In some cases a lack of accessibility may even make the game unplayable. For example, if a game containing voiced dialogue and cinematic scenes does not incorporate subtitles, an important part of the game may become inaccessible to DH players. Similarly if the colour patterns used in a puzzle game are difficult or impossible to distinguish for colour-blind players, they are likely to be left feeling frustrated. The great spectrum of potential users with different kinds of disabilities makes it extremely challenging to design a universally accessible mainstream game, as different users may face different accessibility barriers due to motor, sensory, or cognitive disabilities. Game design researchers Yuan et al. (2010) identify three main accessibility problems to games due to intrinsic interactivity:
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