Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Accessible games
In the year 2008, the Information Solutions Group (visit their website at
ht-
tp://www.infosolutionsgroup.com
)
, on behalf of
PopCap Games
conducted a special
research. According to it, 20.5 percent of casual video game players have a physical,
mental, or developmental disability. Thus a lot of people dedicated to games have
disabilities in different forms. A good game developer should pay attention to their
needs. First of all, there are a lot of people with visual perception disorders; it could be
concluded that these types of people don't play video games, but that's not the case.
They like to play, just like other ordinary people do. According to study of the Inform-
ation Solutions Group, they even play more frequently, for longer periods of time. The
following is an interesting quote from the survey about such players:
"They also report that they experience more significant benefits from playing and
view their game-playing activity as a more important factor in their lives than do non-
disabled consumers."
A group of designers, academics, and specialists created
Game accessibility
guidelines
, which can help to create an accessible game. There are a lot of reas-
onable and useful recommendations, which you can find at
ht-
Apple offers some tools dedicated to people with disabilities. First of all, iPhone (start-
ing with 3GS) and all the versions of iPad have the VoiceOver system (
Settings
| General | Accessibility | VoiceOver
), which can read the text displayed on the
screen. After the system is switched on, a computer-generated voice reads the text
labels of any UI element the user has selected, and the new special gestures are in-
troduced as well. For example, any element is activated not by a single tap, but a
double tap, because a single gesture works like a selection, letting the user recognize
the screen item before starting it.
Consider the example of the VoiceOver compatibility solution from the creators of
Zombie, Run! 2. There is a normal graphic view of a game scene on the left-hand
side, and a special VoiceOver friendly version of the scene, constructed from basic
UI elements, which the screen reading technology can recognize. The image is taken
from the developer's blog:
