14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier today, we talked about the Guitar Hero II contest soon to be held at the E for All Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center and now we've come across another announcement, regarding another event to take place at the LA Convention Center: Games for People with Disabilities. Apparently, this is a move on behalf of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) to help people with disabilities enjoy popular video games too.
According to the official post, the Game Accessibility Special Interest Group (SIG) of IGDA has been invited to participate as exhibitor at the next week's E for All Expo held in LA (October 18 - 21). Basically, SIG members hope to succeed in raising awareness amongst game consumers and developers that people with disabilities also want the chance to play commercial games designed for computers and popular console systems.
"The message we hope to convey is that games are for everyone and are an important part of life today that cannot continue to be inaccessible for people with disabilities," said Michelle Hinn, chairperson of the Game Accessibility SIG and game design instructor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "The majority of games on the market remain unplayable by up to 10-20% of the population. This is not simply an opportunity for developers to increase revenue - it is an issue of social injustice that must be corrected."
The same report mentions different types of disabilities that can deprive one from playing a good game, and there are many other types of disabilities such as learning, auditory, and visual disabilities that make it difficult for the ones suffering from these conditions to play video games. The solution for disabilities other than mobility-related ones is "closed captioning", as the report reveals.
"The gaming industry cannot just assume that because these controllers exist that they are off the hook," Hinn added. "There are many types of disabilities that impact game play in different ways. Even if someone is using these controllers, many are quite costly and many games still remain impossible to play due to issues such as button combination choices that seem to be complex just to be complex. But this criticism has not only been made by disability advocates - Industry veterans such as Ernest Adams and Peter Molyneux have also spoken out on the game complexity control issue for gamers in general. Solutions that help gamers with disabilities can enhance the game play experience for ALL gamers."
The Game Accessibility SIG will be exhibiting at booth #1056 in the LA Convention Center, where they will be presenting games, game mods, and game hardware designed for gamers with disabilities.