Why are we arguing about video game accessibility?

Games are an entertainment medium that everyone deserves to enjoy. Because of that, we have to consider the needs of other people who want to take part as well, but can’t. Accessibility in games has been an ongoing discussion and concern for players and developers alike.  The reception for supporting players with disabilities has been generally positive— a lot of folks are showing a strong willingness, and in some cases commitment, to advocating for strong accessibility features in games.

Not everyone agrees, though. Some believe that requests for certain types of accessibility goes beyond the purpose of making the game accessible. They feel that ‘changing the rules’, in a way, cheapens the value of the game or in some cases amounts to cheating.

I really can’t agree with that.

First, let’s talk accessibility in general. In ‘the real world’, this translates to ramps and lifts, translators for deaf people, movie screenings with reduced volumes and equalized lighting for parents with babies, audible crosswalks— All of these things aim to make public spaces more accessible for people who could otherwise not access them, or have significantly more difficulty when they did. Good accessibility opens up the world for people.

In the digital realm, accessibility features take many forms as well. Many of these are things that take extra work to implement, just like in the real world, but less physical space and resources. On the internet, there are standards for what makes a website accessible and lots of technologies that can use them, such as screen readers for the blind. 

Unfortunately, both in the real and digital world, there are people who will drag their feet on making their products accessible. Sometimes they’ll flat out refuse or even protest the idea of making their products accessible at all. Other times, people are unable to take the steps to make what they have accessible. This could be any number of reasons but it often comes back to cost.

Together those things prevent a lot of people from engaging with services, products, places, and experiences for reasons they didn’t choose. We can do better. Especially now. And especially in games.

As I mentioned earlier, accessibility has been a concern in video games for a long time. A lot of progress has also been made, as developers have been more receptive to the needs of players beyond the ‘average’. More games now have features like color blind modes, broader input support, resizable UIs/text, and voice chat as well as text.

Okay, the last one is blessing and a curse.

I can’t stress enough how much work has been done toward making games more accessible, from developers, to the mod community, to the consumers advocating for more accessible games themselves.

The majority of us at least seem to agree that people with disabilities deserve to enjoy games despite their disabilities. I have yet to see anyone pitch a fit over subtitles, contrast settings, or resizable UIs. More contentious is how far those accessibility options should go and what is and isn’t an accessibility concern.

My opinion is: if there is something preventing people from playing a game that can be rectified in some way, it’s an accessibility concern. Wherever you stand in the discussion, you might have quit games over accessibility issues. I’m talking about things like overcomplicated control schemes, looooong games with no journals or notes (or maps), environments that make distinguishing what’s what a nightmare, badly spaced save points, et cetera.

You might be thinking, “But those are just bad game design decisions,” and you’re right. And… they’re also, at least in my opinion, accessibility concerns. If you quit a game because of reasons like these, chances are many folks did for the same reasons. In all cases, the experience was made inaccessible to you. 

I believe that we need to reframe how we think about accessibility in games. And maybe a bit about how we think about what the purpose of a game is, too. 

Some might think difficulty settings are a cop-out for less adept players. Some might think controls for removing or toning down especially violent sequences or jump scares in games is counter the experience of the games that feature them. Or that removing enemies/bosses from games that heavily feature them makes the game ‘not a game’ anymore.  That discards the numerous reasons people might have for wanting or choosing them. They could be related to their own disabilities or traumas, or those of people near them. They could be personal preferences. These are all valid reasons, but I want to emphasize the validity of people who are asking for features that help them engage with games they want to play, despite their disabilities or traumas.

At their core games are an experience, and if we can allow more people to enjoy their experiences, we should. Disabilities, both visible and invisible need to be considered when we have these discussions. People with disabilities need to be considered. We need to involve them, because many of them are the reason this discussion exists— and while we’re arguing about what amounts to accessibility options vs cheating, we could be figuring out how to make video games more accessible.

This isn’t about about ‘our’ experiences. They’re about other people’s. People who could enjoy what we get to, but can’t because what they need isn’t considered an accessibility concern.

This is why I find ‘the debate’ around the subject so frustrating. The loudest opposition feels that some of these options cheapen the core value of the games themselves. They argue that it diminishes what they’ve done because they put in the work and someone else took ‘the easy route’. Some even go as far as label people who use accessibility features that make games easier or simpler as cheaters. I’ve yet to have anyone thoroughly explain how someone else’s experience has impacted theirs to the point of ruin. The people who prefer games ‘as they’re intended’ still did that. They still did the work to achieve what they did. No one took that away from them. They still had their own experience.

Why bother denigrating someone else’s? Who does that help, and how much further could we get if we actually talked about potential solutions? And what’s the subtext for people who need these features— people who may have any number of disabilities— what does that say to them aside from, “Fuck you,” even if it’s said in more polite words?

Isn’t the point for people to have fun?

I think we should continue this discussion and not forget the people who need the features we’re talking about. We need to remember that our own experiences are just that, and people don’t need to have identical experiences to ours for them to valid.

After all, no offense, it has nothing to do with you.