Gaming becomes more accessible for people with disabilities

For Steve Spohn, who needs a ventilator to breathe and lacks the strength to propel his wheelchair, video games have been a virtual life changer.

Spohn, 41, has spinal muscular atrophy. His body doesn’t make proteins; his backbone “doesn’t send messages to” [his] muscles,” he said. The effect is a slow but sure closing.

He was only 9 when he lost the ability to breathe on his own and switched to a ventilator. By 10, his arms could no longer push his wheelchair. The physical world presented more obstacles every year.

“Gaming has always been an equalizer for me when I couldn’t go and whatever activity was popular,” he said.

Xbox estimates that there are 400 million gamers like Spohn with disabilities worldwide, and it has taken steps to make its hardware and software more accessible to them. While proponents often find the virtual world more accessible than the world outside, they say more needs to be done by tech companies looking to capture the estimated $2 billion market for gamers with disabilities.

There are many aspects to accessible gaming, from the physical hardware to the software and game design, and Xbox is trying to figure out where its customers with disabilities encounter obstacles, said Kaitlyn Jones, a native Wayne and Xbox’s accessibility program manager. games. .

Rather than venturing into the physical world, where he was “facing deadly enemies like stairs,” a Pittsburgh native Spohn met his friends through games like Ultima Online, a massive multiplayer fantasy that aims to approach real life. with an extensive landscape — and offers dozens of people to meet.

When his arms got too tired to press buttons on his computer keyboard, Spohn switched to games that “usually just used a mouse.” When he couldn’t use a mouse anymore, he switched to a high-tech hat.

“I have an infrared hat that I use to control most of my computer’s functions — it’s called Track IR,” he said. “It was originally used by Microsoft flight simulator players to look around a cockpit and give them 360-degree control over their view.”

He realized that he could use the controller in any game. The hat communicates with a device above his computer screen that allows him to select functions on a virtual keyboard.

“My favorite game these days is Rocket League,” said Spohn, senior director of development at The Able Gamers Foundation, a nonprofit that works on accessibility design with companies like Microsoft and everyone who loves gaming as much as he does.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1 billion people around the world have a disability. Spohn’s group includes consultants and engineers ready to point them to tools and adaptive equipment — anything they can do to open up the world of gaming.

Xbox invited the group’s input for the design of its adaptive controller. The Obama administration invited Able Gamers to the White House to hear their thoughts on gaming and accessibility. More recently, the group was asked to contribute ideas on Batgirl’s disability backstory for an upcoming video game based on the movie “The Batman.”

Adjust colors and adjust contrast

In recent years, people with disabilities have “pushed forward,” Spohn said, making greater strides than ever. He attributes this to the visibility of celebrities with disabilities in various fields, including actor Steve Way, who has muscular dystrophy, and comedian Zach Anner, who has cerebral palsy.

“You now have people with disabilities taking on the mantle in these different sectors, and we’re all helping the same cause,” Spohn said. “It may seem like pie-in-the-sky to say we all work together, but we really are. We are all making people realize that disabilities are something that needs to be addressed.”

Anita Mortaloni, the accessibility director at Xbox, agrees. Accessibility in gaming has made greater strides of late, and positions at large companies focusing on accessibility have become more prominent, she said.

Xbox issued accessibility guidelines in 2019 with features to make gaming more accessible, such as ways to adjust colors and adjust contrast, making game menus more useful for people with low vision. The company also made it possible for gamers to remap buttons on the controllers, so those with limited mobility can remap functions to buttons that are easier to reach.

Extend their efforts to players who encounter other obstacles, the company released mental health guidelines in May.

“One in five American adults experiences mental illness — anxiety, depression, OCD, eating disorders, PTSD,” Mortaloni said. “The intent of these guidelines was for players to be aware of in-game content” before being exposed to elements that could act as mental health triggers, she said, citing the survival game Grounded as an example. “If you don’t like spiders in Grounded, let us know that there are spiders and you can put it in Arachnophobia mode, which takes the legs off the spiders and makes them a little less scary.”

The company also hires people with disabilities, including Wayne resident Jones, who said her own disabilities include chronic pain, autoimmune and mental health conditions. Before joining Xbox, she was an occupational therapist who ran a non-profit organization with her father. Warfighter Engaged from Wayne makes custom game controllers for veterans with disabilities.

Jones and Mortaloni spend their days amplifying the voices of the disabled gaming community and capitalizing on the feedback.

“We have livestream events for several members of the disability community where they take over our Xbox livestreaming Twitch channel,” Jones said. “There they can talk about their gaming experiences as someone with a disability.”

The Xbox Accessibility Insider’s League currently has 168,000 members, Mortaloni said. This link, located on the console home pages, allows customers to provide feedback directly to engineers.

Such efforts are paying off, Spohn said.

Microsoft, the founder and owner of the Xbox gaming brand, is “at the forefront of helping people with disabilities,” he said, adding that Microsoft, Logitech and Sony, which produces PlayStation, have their hearts “in the right place.” ” to have.

Video games do not fall under the purview of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) was signed by the Obama administration in 2010. It requires “communication services and products to be accessible,” but the law was written with TV and email in mind.

“Do we need an ADA for video games? I’d rather see the industry come around because it has to, not because it has to,” Spohn said. may not be financially motivated to enter disaster, but a video game company wants the money that people with disabilities have, so they will bet the options, if not for good reason, simply because they want the money.”

Still short

There are two key areas where companies still fall short, Spohn said. First, customers need to know if a game has captions. Can gameplay be modified so it doesn’t cause PTSD? Can the menus be displayed in high contrast?

“The industry is bad at getting accessibility information when a game is launched so people can make informed decisions about buying the video game,” Spohn said.

There are some exceptions, and while sites like DAGERSystem are trying to fix the problem by overhauling game accessibility, the labeling isn’t happening across the board, Spohn said. Gamers should rely on friends who bought the games or hope accessibility features are mentioned in a streamer’s review.

Mortaloni said Xbox is aware of the issue and has started tagging accessibility features in its games for its online store.

The other recurring flaw is that the representation of people with disabilities in video games leaves much to be desired, lawyers said.

In many scripts, characters with disabilities often play the role of the villain, Spohn said.

“He’s mad at the world and his disability is the reason he’s a bad person,” Spohn said. “They want to hurt the world because the world has been cruel to them. It turns you into a villain and you want to burn everything down.”

Diversity in Gaming analyzes inclusivity in games and finds that physical disabilities, such as amputees, burn victims, and wheelchair-bound characters, are more common than nuanced problems, such as anxiety and depression. In addition, the goal during play is often to solve or recover a handicap.

The idea that people with disabilities are broken and need fixing – a concept known as the medical model of disabilities – was rejected and abandoned in the 1970s, but it still persists in the media and in games, often due to the trope of medical conditions being replaced by superhuman powers or superhuman prosthetics, said Ian Hamilton, an accessibility expert writing for the site.

“In addition, games are often guilty of promoting the myth that disability is rare,” Hamilton said, “with all the impact that has on wider prejudice and discrimination.”