The core concepts of accessibility

Accessibility: What to Know?

In the last two years, I learned an outstanding number of things about accessibility. The first thing I learned is that it’s a very wide concept; it encompasses a lot of different things (types of disabilities, design processes, approach, tools, limits, etc.); there are still many things we don’t know how to do or that we still don’t understand, and it can quickly become overwhelming. That’s why I thought it’d be a good idea to summarize the core concepts I learned into a short and easy to digest (I hope) article.

Models of Disabilities

One of the first things to understand when designing for accessibility is the models of disability. In a nutshell, the models of disability are the lens through which we view disabilities. For example, one of the models is the medical model of disability. This model sees disability as a consequence of health condition (age, diseases, trauma, etc.). In this model, disability is viewed as inherent to a person. Nowadays, the model that is most commonly used in accessibility is the social model of disability. In this model, a person’s limitations are not determined by their condition, but by their environment. Let me give you an example. Stairs are an obstacle to many people using all means of walking and moving aids. We can imagine that if there were ramps to access every building, bevels on all sidewalks and elevators everywhere, everyone, no matter their physical abilities or means of self-transportation, could get anywhere. In this example, no one would be disabled by the human-made environment. That being said, I agree with you, it does sound utopic (and frankly, it is) because we live in a world that is bound by many physical and material restrictions. However, one of the many great things about video games is that they are not bound by the same restrictions. On the contrary, we, as game designers, create the rules and limitations that bound our worlds and games. Sure, there are things we do not control (like the hardware), but we do control what we put in the game itself.

Even though the social model is not perfect, it is currently the most popular and useful model we have for designing accessibility in video games. In my opinion, the most important thing the social model does is that it holds us responsible for the accessibility and the inclusivity of the things we create (in our case video games).

The Spectrums of Abilities and Limitation

As humans, we all have our own abilities and limitations. No matter our age, gender and other demographic factors. We are all faster, stronger and smarter than some, and slower, weaker and not as smart as others. All our abilities reside on different spectrums. There exist many intricate ways to categorize our abilities, but generally, we separate them in four categories: motor and mobility, visual, auditory, learning and cognitive. No matter who we are, all our abilities are located somewhere on these spectrums. When we start to see people in terms of their abilities, it changes our perspective on disability (or at least, it did for me). It also changes the way we see accessibility and it makes us realize that it’s actually for everyone. Allow me to show you how.

The features that allow players to slow down the game speed in Celeste is useful for the person who’s got delayed reaction times because of a medical condition AND for my friend who doesn’t play games, who found Cleste just a little too hard for her, but still wanted to play it all the way through. On the other hand, the infinite air dashes allowed the same friend to complete some levels she wouldn’t have been able to otherwise AND allowed my brother (who’s really good at the game) to try some pretty insane speedrun tricks.

Detailed subtitles are mandatory for people with different levels of hearing loss AND they allow my best friend to play on mute with his newborn sleeping on his lap at night.

When we realize that no matter who we are, we all have our own set of abilities and limitations, I think it becomes obvious that accessibility is in fact, for everyone. 

Types of accessibility and design processes

The first thing I will say here, and I cannot stress this enough, is that no matter your design process, if you want to make your game accessible, you HAVE so start thinking about it from the get-go. It has to be a concern from day one. This will ensure better working and pertinent accessibility, which allows players to access the core experience and that does not feel out of place. It will also save a lot of time, money and hassle. That being said, there are multiple ways to make a game accessible and different kind of accessibility. Personally, I like to talk about extrinsic and intrinsic accessibility.

What I call extrinsic accessibility is accessibility in the shape of features that let the players modify different aspects of a game, let it be the gameplay, UI, sounds, etc. These types of features and options can be unique to a specific game (ex. modifying a mechanic), or general options that are found in many of them (ex. subtitles). There are excellent tools and guidelines that can help developers add more accessibility features to their games. As of right now, my favourite ones are the Game accessibility guidelines. These are a set of guidelines that can help evaluate how accessible a game is and give ideas to developers on how they can improve the accessibility of their game. They are separated in three tiers (basic, intermediate and advanced) and the guidelines are classified by categories (motor, cognitive, vision, hearing, speech and general). As an accessibility game designer, I think it’s important to remember that these guidelines (and other similar tools) are there to support the design process and not replace it. What I mean by that is, every guideline may not fit in your game, but they can definitely help with adjusting a certain mechanic or making you aware of some player limitations that you might not have thought of.

This is also why, despite their usefulness, these guidelines can sometimes fall short when it comes to more specific accessibility features or intrinsic accessibility. Intrinsic accessibility is what I call accessibility that is embedded in the game itself and that does not require actions from the player to be enabled. An example I like to give is The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening. In the original version of the game, there was a dungeon that was called the colour dungeon. To complete it, the players had to solve a series of “zeldaesque” puzzles based on colours. In its 2019 remake, they added shapes to the puzzles so that players who could not see or differentiate colours (for whatever reasons) could still solve the dungeon. In this example, the accessibility of the dungeon is not an option, it is embedded in the design of the game. In a lot of cases, these types of design make accessibility elegant and more seamless. Also, it removes the stigma that some players have of having to adjust the game to their needs. This brings me to one of the most important steps of the design process.

Including people with disability in the development process of games is the best way to insure elegant, useful and working accessibility. This idea refers to the principle of co-design. As I stated previously, we all have our own abilities and limitations. For that reason, it makes it impossible to really understand and experience what it’s like not to have our very own set of abilities. For this reason, it is essential that people with disability be consulted in regard to accessibility in games. The experience of a blind player is not that same as the one of a sighted player playing blindfolded. As game designers, we have to be mindful of what we know and what we don’t. We have to accept that in some situations, we do not have the perspective needed to adequately tackle some design problems and this is where designers and players with disabilities come into play. As the motto “Nothing About Us Without Us” state, when it comes to accessibility in games, people with disability have to be included in all parts of the development process to ensure the best quality possible. 

My approach as a game accessibility designer

So, what do I do as a game accessibility designer? Well, first of all, I’m a game designer at the core, so I help with the design of different aspects of the game (mostly gameplay, systems and 3C’s). Me specializing in accessibility simply means that I add a couple layers to my design process. As I stated earlier, my goal is not to change the game. On the contrary, my job is to identify what we want our players to do, to feel and to experience while playing the game, and then ask myself "what could prevent some players from attaining that core experience?" When I identify the mechanics or systems that might be problematic, I dissect them to understand what they do and what they add to the game. This helps me to figure out how I can tweak them better and what my solutions have to accomplish. Then, I come up with different designs and options that I think could solve the problem. Sometimes it’s about changing the mechanic itself, sometimes it’s about replacing it completely by another one that is more inclusive but that serves the same purpose as the previous one, and other times, it’s about adding features that let players tweak the original mechanic themselves, without changing how it works by default. In all these cases, these possible changes are always discussed with the team to ensure that the propositions align with the core gameplay experience and do not disrupt or derogate from the initial design or the intentions of the team. 

Don’t want to read all of that? That’s all right, I’ve got you. Here’s a quick TL; DR.

The first thing I learned is that accessibility in games can quickly become overwhelming.

We, the developers, are responsible for the limitations and hurdles we put in our games.

As humans, we all have our unique set of abilities and limitations. This explains why accessibility is for everyone.

The most important thing to remember about accessibility is to start as early as possible. It saves time, money and hassles.

There are different tools, guidelines and design processes to help make a game more accessible.

It is crucial that people with disabilities be included in the different steps of game development, as it is impossible for someone to accurately experience limitations that they do not themselves encounter in their lives.

My job is to ensure that the game is playable for as many players as possible, without changing, disrupting or derogating from the initial design or the core experience of the game.