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Gaming Accessibility

Making games playable by disabled players

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Disabled players were adapting games from the early 1980s: mouth and head switches for the Atari 2600, a speed-control joystick interface for the Spectrum, Nintendo's sip-and-puff Hands Free Controller in 1989. Mainstream support came much later. In 2002 Edge found the industry doing 'very little'; since then subtitles, remapping and colour-blind modes have spread, Microsoft and Sony have built adaptive controllers, and The Last of Us Part II shipped with more than 60 accessibility settings.

In 1983 a twelve-year-old with cerebral palsy, John Carasic, was playing Asteroids on an Atari VCS without using his hands. A pressure switch by his right knee fired; two switches on a plate behind his head, which he hit by moving his head left and right, steered. Electronic Games told his story in February 1983, along with those of Tommy Gonzales, a 13-year-old who could move only his head and played with a mouth control, and Kirk Kilgour, a former US national volleyball player who had become quadriplegic and could “wipe out a screen of space invaders using a mouth control”. Games accessibility, making games playable by people with disabilities, began like this: with individual players, families and engineers adapting the hardware, decades before the industry took it on.

Fast facts

  • Early adaptations: custom Atari VCS controllers with puff, suck, bite and head switches (1983); a Spectrum interface with a speed control, advertised partly to disabled players (1985); Nintendo’s Hands Free Controller (1989).
  • Industry neglect: Edge reported in 2002 that developers were doing “very little” for disabled players.
  • Organisations: the IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group (2003); AbleGamers (2004); SpecialEffect (UK).
  • Guidelines: the Game Accessibility Guidelines (2012).
  • Adaptive controllers: the Xbox Adaptive Controller (2018) and the PlayStation Access controller (2023).
  • A landmark game: The Last of Us Part II (2020), with more than 60 accessibility settings.

Switches for the Atari

The controllers in the Electronic Games article were the work of Ken Yankelevitz, an aerospace engineer and programmer. He had taken Atari joysticks apart to design a more reliable one, showed his ideas to Atari, “and they began referring handicapped people to him”. Working directly with quadriplegic players, he tried puff, suck and bite switches, telephone keypads mounted at mouth height, helmets and other switches, and found that “each handicap is slightly different and requires different hardware”. His most popular design was a box of soft-touch buttons. The point, the article said, was that these players could play “the very same videogames that millions of other kids are playing”. In the same issue, a small advertisement for KY Enterprises of Long Beach, California, offered “controllers for handicapped” alongside its joystick.

A speed control for the Spectrum

In Britain, DK’Tronics sold a Spectrum joystick interface in 1985 with a dial that slowed any game down or froze it. Its advertisement in Your Computer listed who it was for: “young children, the disabled, less experienced games enthusiasts, programmers and software developers will find individual benefits, you can slow games down to a complete stop and so improve your skills and high scores.” This was a mainstream accessory at £12.95, not a specialist device, and slowing a game down is still one of the commonest accessibility options.

Nintendo’s Hands Free Controller

Nintendo of America announced the Hands Free Controller in Nintendo Power at the start of 1989, for “physically limited, special needs players who are unable to manipulate the controllers currently offered”. It was worn like a vest. The player steered with a joystick at the chin and worked the A and B buttons by “sip and puff”. Nintendo’s research and development department had worked with Todd Stablefeldt, who tested it at a children’s hospital, and with other players. It sold the controller directly, through its consumer service line, “as a non-profit item”: $120 for the controller alone, or $179 with an NES and a game. British readers heard about it in ACE that August, which called it the “worthiest” of a crop of new controllers and noted that only a slight movement of the jaw or head was needed.

“Very little”: the industry in 2002

Two decades on, mainstream games still did little for disabled players. In May 2002 Edge asked “Is the videogame industry making enough effort to cater to the needs of gamers with impairments?” and answered: “so far, very little.” Almost all the support it found came from outside the industry, such as audio-only games for blind players. Deaf players described cut-scenes and mission briefings without subtitles. Lora Willets, who reviewed games for deaf players at deafgamers.com, praised Grand Theft Auto III for having subtitles on by default, while Niall Rattansi, a deaf player, said a missing subtitle option had “ruined our enjoyment”. Edge noted that Britain’s Disability Discrimination Act 1995 already applied to services, and quoted a lawyer who believed it covered games.

Readers answered in the June issue. Jane Caroline, “a disabled gamer myself”, wrote that she had chosen the PlayStation over the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast “as the controller is more suited to my style of play”, and that Namco had told her it intended “to push the boundaries of accessibility for disabled gamers”. Steve Lee, who is colour-blind, described radar objectives coded only by colour, which “can often result in me dragging my wife (a strong anti-gamer) to sit over my shoulder shouting colours to me”. His suggestion was the one games later adopted: “surely icons can be used”.

Guidelines, charities and adaptive controllers

The organised movement grew in the following years. The International Game Developers Association set up a Game Accessibility Special Interest Group in 2003. AbleGamers was founded in 2004 by two disabled players, Mark Barlet and Stephanie Walker. In the UK the charity SpecialEffect works on “putting fun and inclusion back into the lives of physically disabled people” through games. In September 2012 a group of developers, specialists and academics published the Game Accessibility Guidelines, and in 2018 Coty Craven launched Can I Play That?, a site reviewing games for accessibility.

Hardware followed. Microsoft announced the Xbox Adaptive Controller in May 2018 at $99.99, designed with AbleGamers, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, Craig Hospital, SpecialEffect and Warfighter Engaged. It has two large buttons built in and works with common adaptive switches, the same kind of device Yankelevitz was building in 1983. Sony’s Access controller for the PlayStation 5, developed as Project Leonardo, went on sale on 6 December 2023 at $89.99.

Games changed too. When Naughty Dog released The Last of Us Part II in 2020, it described “more than 60 accessibility settings”, including text-to-speech, high-contrast display, navigation assistance, full button remapping, options that replace held buttons with presses, and presets for vision, hearing and motor needs.

Common accessibility options

Need Typical options
Vision High-contrast modes, text-to-speech for menus, magnification, colour-blind modes or icons as well as colours
Hearing Subtitles and captions, visual cues for important sounds, separate volume controls
Motor Button remapping, toggles instead of held buttons, aim assistance, support for switches and adaptive controllers
Cognitive and general Difficulty and speed options, navigation help, pausing cut-scenes

Sources

See also

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