“The results of inclusive design for accessibility always lead to a better product for everyone.”
-Phil Spencer
Make gaming more accessible for all players!
With an estimated 450 million gamers with disabilities worldwide, it’s critical for the gaming industry to design games with accessibility in mind. As the Xbox Research Accessibility team, we strive to help game developers design games and products for all gamers on the planet. One way we aim to achieve this goal with Xbox Game Studios is to conduct Game Accessibility Workshops focused on evolving the way game development teams think about and apply inclusive and accessible design principles during game development.
During these workshops, developers create a shared vision about game accessibility by:
- Directly engaging with players with disabilities
- Reflecting on and synthesizing their learnings as a team
- Apply their learnings to in-development products and studio planning
This shared vision helps guide accessibility planning and implementation throughout development, saving teams time, energy, and resources, while improving the accessibility of their games. To learn more about some of the key insights learned by our developers through our Game Accessibility Workshops, check out this presentation from the Xbox Research Accessibility team at the 2024 European Game Accessibility Conference.
Game Accessibility Workshop in action
Developer Quotes
“Hearing how the advisor navigates game worlds with limited vision was fascinating as a level designer and got me thinking how we can communicate navigation when we can't rely on visual cues.”
“[Workshop] It just changed our minds about what accessibility really is about and who it's for. We got to see people who, for many different reasons, were not able to really enjoy our game and it gave us so much more empathy for the fact that accessibility is really for our users.”
“Each of the interviewees explain their own difficulties and experiences. It gives a tangible aspect of their disabilities and of the accessible tools that will help them better in the game experiences.”
Goal of the Game Accessibility Workshop Toolkit
The goal of the Game Accessibility Workshop Toolkit is to support the development of more accessible games for all players to enjoy by sharing Xbox Research Accessibility team’s learnings about how to set up and conduct game accessibility workshops with the wider game developer community.
The toolkit includes:
- Guidance on what to consider when setting up a game accessibility workshop.
- Visual assets to use in conducting the workshop along with instructions on how to use those visual assets.
- A video recording of our Inclusive design 101 presentation used at the start of the workshop to give attendees an overview of why inclusive design for accessibility is important and to expose attendees to the principles of inclusive design.
