By Steve Spohn
Includification might sound like one of the strangest words you’ve heard in quite some time, but it’s much more than a word—it’s becoming an entire movement. The origins of the word come from the term gamification, which is used by educators to explain game mechanics and game design techniques in non-game contexts, such as in a video game where the sole purpose is to teach the game or convey some sort of information.
At the AbleGamers Foundation (www.ablegamers.org), our overarching goal is to get the largest number of gamers with disabilities possible included in mainstream games. This mission includes independent and AAA or premier games like the ones you see advertised on TV. Everything we do—from community outreach to consulting with individual people with disabilities—is to reach the end goal of making games inclusive for those with disabilities.
When AbleGamers started in 2004, Mark Barlet had a vision. He wanted to make sure that anyone who has a disability has the opportunity to play video games just like anyone else. Before the foundation, there was very little information on how to make video game titles accessible. And even if you could make them accessible, there was very little information on how large the disability market was, which made arguing for such options very difficult.
Since those days, our organization has knocked on the door of every single major developer, publisher, and gaming studio in the world. We’ve reached out to developers so often they have come to know our names. Over and over we would tell anyone in the gaming industry who will listen about the importance of accessibility options.
But a few years ago there was both a noticeable change in the attitudes of new developers we hadn’t yet talked to and a new resolve in the friends we had made along the way. People were no longer asking us why accessibility was important; they wanted to know how to make things accessible in the most efficient way possible.
We had finally managed to convince publishers that leaving more than 33 million potential gamers out of their target market was a bad idea. Developers are mostly artists who simply want to share their visions of innovative, interactive stories with as large an audience as possible.
This gave us the perfect opportunity to appeal to both the goodhearted nature of helping those with disabilities just because it’s the right thing to do and to the bottom-line thinking of the powers that be. But we still had the problem of turning more than a decade of experience from our assistive technology experts into a meaningful informational package teaching developers the ins and outs of accessibility.
We live in an age where technology replaces itself at an alarming rate. Not only is the next generation of video game consoles knocking at our doors, the industry itself is moving toward mobile, 3D, and even virtual environments. The information needs to be conclusive, easy-to-understand, and updated on a consistent basis—fluid and timely with the ability to change as rapidly as the industry itself.
That’s when the idea of includification hit us. There needed to be a set of guidelines that could be left on every coffee table, office desk, and resource library of all gaming studios, no matter the size.
What started as a simple idea to help developers understand accessibility a little bit better has turned into a masterpiece. Includification (www.includification.com) is a free, 48-page, fully illustrated roadmap for developers on how to make video games as accessible as possible in an efficient, cost-effective, and simple manner.
Accessibility is split up into three tiers—good, better, and best. We have found that the idea of accessibility can sometimes be daunting. Disabilities are widely varied into different types of disabilities and subtypes of those disabilities, and understanding the nuances of all of them can be intimidating.
Instead, the Includification document lays out the most common challenges faced by gamers with disabilities. We have included scenarios and developer exercises to help designers understand complex situations in an easy-to-digest format. The tiers allow accessibility to be reached in milestones.
The first tier is comprised of the options that are both easy to implement and considered standard, including subtitles, remap ability, and colorblind options.
The second tier is for items that may be more expensive or time-consuming to implement, but by including them, a large majority of gamers with disabilities would be able to play a given title.
The third tier includes more wishful-thinking items, such as slowing down the game speed to 25% and building in text-to-speech options for the blind.
Altogether, the document serves to counsel game studios when a game accessibility expert isn’t around to advocate accessibility. Assistive technology hardware has come a long way, but software can often take the place of an expensive piece of equipment. Many people either don’t know about or can’t afford technologies such as eye-tracking equipment, but the inclusion of accessibility options as standard game design can help mitigate some challenges faced by gamers with disabilities.
Recently, we’ve made a push for the hardware aspects as well. Adroit was a first-of-its-kind controller aimed directly at the gamers-with-disabilities community. Two years later, it has helped hundreds of people by allowing individuals to set up switches any way they like to play the same Xbox games as their friends and loved ones. And now, AbleGamers has taken an even bigger step toward making these devices available at public libraries.
On 10 October 2012, the Martin Luther King Public Library in Washington, DC, became home to the first permanent location of an AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade. With more installations on the way, permanent exhibits will quickly become the way people with disabilities can determine the right equipment for their particular situation without ever spending a dime.
AbleGamers has done these technology demonstrations all across the country at various events for a long time, but we also get messages afterward asking when and where the next event would happen. No matter how many we do, there always seems to be someone who couldn’t make the event. The ability to hold these stations at locations around the United States is the first step to becoming all-inclusive.
Far too many individuals with disabilities approach us at expos around the country with the presumption that there is no way for them to play a game because of the challenges they face from the disability. Time after time we show people who never thought they could game the right technology makes it possible.
PopCap, makers of hugely popular titles such as Plants vs. Zombies and Bejewled, report that as much as 60% of their player base describe themselves as disabled. With over one billion disabled individuals worldwide, gaming is quickly proving itself to be an invaluable tool for recreation, rehabilitation, and education.
Video games are used as a way to stay connected with friends and family no matter how far away they might be. They bring us closer together. They level the playing field. They allow us to have the experiences of running, jumping, and flying in ways we could never imagine.
You may never own your own band, but thanks to Rock Band, you can. You may never be an NFL quarterback, but thanks to Madden 13, you can be. You may never walk, but in World of Warcraft, you can fly.
These are experiences people of all abilities should have an equal chance to experience. Some of us just need a little bit of a helping hand.
Steve Spohn is the editor-in-chief of AbleGamers and outreach chair for the AbleGamers Foundation. He has been interviewed as an expert in gaming with disabilities and assistive technologies by MSNBC, CNN, PC World, G4, and multiple international journals. Steve has travelled across the country as a speaker at various venues and events,including PAX East, Games for Health, Assistive Technology Centers, universities, and many developer studios. In his time off, he is a Web designer, gamer, writer, and on to his newest endeavor, learning Japanese. He holds degrees in visual communication, information technology, Web design, and writing, with an MFA in fiction writing as his next goal. Steve is an active social media user and you can always find him on Twitter (@stevespohn), Facebook, and on the AbleGamers forums (www.ablegamers.com/forums).
