More Than Just a Game: Accessibility in Computer Games

During the last decades, people with disabilities have gained access to Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI); with a resultant impact on their societal inclusion and participation possibilities, standard HCI must therefore be made with care to avoid a possible reduction in this accessibility. Games, considered as a field of research, could provide new interaction principles, which can be incorporated into the existing HCI Standards, thereby complimenting and expanding these standards positively. However, games also provide an interesting new potential for better access and for supporting people with disabilities. They can be used to acclimatize people, who have had little or no exposure to technology, to interaction with modern Information and Computer Technology (ICT). Some simulation games act as an interface between games playing and real life, where the end user, in the form of an avatar, can interact within modern communication systems. It is important to ensure that everyone has accessibility to this technology, regardless of abilities or age. This paper advocates pro-active "research in games accessibility" and provides some first considerations on establishing a) guidelines for accessible game development, b) Active Game Accessibility (AGA) development framework to support game developers and Assistive Technology (AT) providers and c) a collection of games or game scenario examples ("code pattern collection") as a reference for game and AT developers.