Accessibility, one more aspect of the inclusion of video games
Among users who are reluctant to use inclusive language, one of the main arguments is that if a product really wants to be inclusive, it should integrate sign language or other ways to include more population sectors. However, this is an aspect that is represented in the game, since Hailey, Miles Morales’ love interest, has a hearing disability, so in the game they communicate through this language.
On the other hand, for players who have different disabilities there are also options with the aim of providing them with a better quality of play, from aspects of hearing, vision and even game assistance, among others. This is called accessibility and it has led to important changes in the gaming industry.
With the auditory accessibility settings, for example, in Spider-Man 2, subtitles are activated in dialogues, in addition to these also having visual aspects that make them more readable. In the visual sense, the adjustments add elements for sign language to be narrated, in addition to the size of the icons and pop-ups being larger.
A relevant element in this regard are the high contrast options, designed for people with visual disabilities with which solid shading of one color is applied to the desired character, whether it is the protagonist, enemies or secondary elements to improve their visibility.
For those players who cannot keep up with the actions, the settings allow you to change the speed of the game to make it more accessible, as well as change the difficulty of the puzzles so that players who cannot solve them in the first instance do not feel demotivated.
“Accessibility allows more people to play, which is very important for those with disabilities, since everyone experiences video games in a different way,” said Anita Mortaloni, director of accessibility at Xbox in a previous note to Expansión. “They allow more people to experience video games regardless of their condition.”
For his part, Sam Thompson, senior producer at Sony Interactive Entertainment, shared that accessibility represents innovation in the industry, as it allows us to complement the level design experience to make them more accessible for all types of players.
“Being inclusive,” said Emilia Schatz, co-design lead at PlayStation studio Naughty Dog, “is simply a matter of trying to represent game worlds that reflect the same beautiful diversity that we see in the world and in our players.”