research-article

An empirical study of issues and barriers to mainstream video game accessibility

Authors:

John R. Porter,

Julie A. KientzAuthors Info & Claims

ASSETS '13: Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Article No.: 3, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/2513383.2513444

Published: 21 October 2013 Publication History

Abstract

A gap between the academic human-computer interaction community and the game development industry has led to games not being as thoroughly influenced by accessibility standards as most other facets of information and communication technology. As a result, individuals with disabilities are unable to fully, if at all, engage with many commercial games. This paper presents the findings of a pair of complementary empirical studies intended to understand the current state of game accessibility in a grounded, real-world context and identify issues and barriers. The first study involved an online survey of 55 gamers with disabilities to elicit information about their play habits, experiences, and accessibility issues. The second study consisted of a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals from the game industry to better understand accessibility's situation in their design and development processes. Through quantitative and qualitative thematic analysis, we derive high-level insights from the data, such as the prevalence of assistive technology incompatibility and the value of middleware for implementing accessibility standardization. Finally, we discuss specific implications and how these insights can be used to define future work which may help to narrow the gap.

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Cited By

Van Ommen CWalton CDhanpaul ACurtorillo IChaparro B(2024)Out of The Box, Onto the Screen: Insights from an OOBE Study of the Xbox Adaptive ControllerProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/1071181324126857968:1(1694-1699)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241268579
Loewen GCochrane KGirouard A(2024)From Imagination to Innovation: Using Participatory Design Fiction to Envision the Future of Accessible Gaming Wearables for Players with Upper Limb Motor DisabilitiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770738:CHI PLAY(1-30)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677073
Loewen G(2024)Exploring Gaming Wearables for Players with Upper Limb Motor Disabilities through Design Fiction and DIYCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678854(427-430)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678854
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

An empirical study of issues and barriers to mainstream video game accessibility
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing profession
      1. Assistive technologies
  2. User characteristics
    1. People with disabilities

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cover image ACM Conferences

ASSETS '13: Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 2013

343 pages

ISBN:9781450324052

DOI:10.1145/2513383

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGACCESS: ACM Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 October 2013

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Division of Graduate Education

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ASSETS '13

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SIGACCESS

ASSETS '13: The 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

October 21 - 23, 2013

Washington, Bellevue

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ASSETS '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 28 of 98 submissions, 29%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 436 of 1,556 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

Van Ommen CWalton CDhanpaul ACurtorillo IChaparro B(2024)Out of The Box, Onto the Screen: Insights from an OOBE Study of the Xbox Adaptive ControllerProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/1071181324126857968:1(1694-1699)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1177/10711813241268579
Loewen GCochrane KGirouard A(2024)From Imagination to Innovation: Using Participatory Design Fiction to Envision the Future of Accessible Gaming Wearables for Players with Upper Limb Motor DisabilitiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770738:CHI PLAY(1-30)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3677073
Loewen G(2024)Exploring Gaming Wearables for Players with Upper Limb Motor Disabilities through Design Fiction and DIYCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678854(427-430)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678854
Rodriguez ADevasia NPei MKientz J(2024)Towards Construction-Oriented Play for Vision-Diverse PeopleProceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3663548.3675607(1-12)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663548.3675607
Mandryk RMirza-Babaei PDenisova AFreeman GJohnson D(2024)Games and Play SIG: Connecting Games Research to the Broader HCI ContextExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3643986(1-6)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3643986
Martinez JFroehlich JFogarty J(2024)Playing on Hard Mode: Accessibility, Difficulty and Joy in Video Game Adoption for Gamers with DisabilitiesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642804(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642804
Nair VZhu HSong PWang JSmith B(2024)Surveyor: Facilitating Discovery Within Video Games for Blind and Low Vision PlayersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642615(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642615
Guzsvinecz T(2024)Video game accessibility in the top-level genresUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-024-01154-7Online publication date: 30-Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-024-01154-7
Larreina-Morales MMangiron C(2024)Audio description in video games? Persons with visual disabilities weigh inUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-023-01036-423:2(577-588)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10209-023-01036-4
Shimabukuro JMoquillaza ABaldeón J(2024)A Developer-Oriented Framework Proposal for Evaluating the Accessibility of Video GamesHCI International 2024 – Late Breaking Papers10.1007/978-3-031-76818-7_7(83-102)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-76818-7_7
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