The Business Case for Accessibility 

Disabled players account for 31% of US gamers and 29% in the UK, according to a recent study from industry analysts Newzoo. Looking even beyond the video games industry, 16-20% of the world’s population identify as having a disability. These are numbers that can’t be ignored and confirm accessibility as not only a moral obligation but a financially sound decision.

Accessibility can be defined as the breadth of people that are able to enjoy and access an experience, oftentimes focused on people with disabilities but also benefiting the wider population. Creating an accessible game means adopting considerate, inclusive and customisable game design that accommodates the needs of all kinds of players. Examples include, colourblind friendly design, configurable control schemes, subtitles, closed captions and audio features. That’s accessibility. Not to be confused with approachability, which is something I see often online. Approachability is mostly onboarding new players into an experience. Sometimes there can be overlaps, for example when an experience is made to be approachable, it can be made, almost by accident rather than design, to be more accessible and vice versa. However, these are two completely different intentions that are important to separate out as their own things.

Making a business case for accessibility in video games

While ethics and morality provide a strong foundation for accessibility, it’s equally important to recognize the business advantages. It’s these conversations that are perhaps most crucial in terms of securing dedicated budgets for these types of tasks. Integrating accessibility into the early stages of game development minimizes costs. However, having to fix accessibility issues after a video game’s release can be much more costly. 

Allocating a budget for accessibility up front will prevent you from having to spend a lot more money if unforeseen challenges crop up post-launch or even during launch. This foresight prevents the need to hurriedly assign resources to fixing barriers that are, in some cases, causing harm to your audience. Not to mention, assigning a team to map out a feature that you haven’t planned is going to be very costly. Having to damage control online sentiment when you have a bunch of articles that are coming out about the game having poor accessibility is also an unforeseen cost that’s entirely avoidable when implementing accessibility from the beginning of your process. It’s really about prevention, and being proactive in these efforts. 

Accessibility by design

Accessibility begins with thoughtful design. A lot of accessibility barriers can be prevented at the design level of production. So even before we start making the case for a feature to be implemented, we need to first understand what can be made more inclusive and accessible within the design itself. 

That’s where the concept of inclusive design comes into play. When developing a new video game, you already have to think about UI, creating a control scheme, building new environments etc. When tackling these tasks, how can you ensure that an accessibility mindset is being integrated into them? This approach will prevent a lot of unforeseen costs, and potential backlash.

You should also consider integrating user testing with disabled players during early design phases. Their insights can help identify potential barriers and opportunities for improvement before development progresses too far.