You are here
Accessible Game Award winners announced
Transcript
16 February 2014
Roberta: Today we’re talking about video games, specifically those games that have been made to be played by people with disabilities. There’s even a dedicated set of awards to recognise them. Online Editor from Media Access Australia Eliza, is here to tell us more. Welcome Eliza.
Eliza: Hi Roberta.
Roberta: Now what makes a video game accessible?
Eliza: Well the key to games is to make sure they can be customised; that means that players can do things like change the text size, change the colour scheme, and change the sound from say, stereo to mono, for example. So it’s up to the studio which makes the games to ensure that these customisations are possible for each game they produce. Of course, video games generally are a multi-sensory experience, so they use sound and vision and the vibration of the controllers to really make the player feel immersed in the game. So there’s a lot of potential for game designers to really consider the experience of a gamer who is missing one of those senses. I mean how can you compensate? How can you make a fully immersive and fun experience for someone who say, doesn’t have a sense of sight or a sense of hearing?
Roberta: So what are some of the more accessible games that are available?
Eliza: Well, the AbleGamers Charity in the US is pretty much the authority on things like this; they focus particularly on games for people with mobility impairment. They just announced the winners of their Accessible Game Awards, and I have to tell you Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was crowned the winner. You know that one Roberta?
Roberta: No, I’m not familiar with that one.
Eliza: Big fan? [laughs] Neither am I, I have to say. But this was named the winner because it was the most customisable game.
Roberta: Can you just tell us again what that game was?
Eliza: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. It’s part of the, the Final Fantasy franchise has been going since I think I was about 10 years old so…
Roberta: Oh, really?
Eliza: Yeah, this is the latest instalment, and I think the accessibility of the game has improved eventually.
Roberta: I mentioned earlier that I had been playing a video game with one of my grandchildren, first time ever; I did play the little Donkey Kong thing, this little hand-held things, but not a video game on the television, and I can understand why people like them Eliza.
Eliza: Oh, exactly. There’s nothing like it. They are fun. The level of just, I guess, transportation to this other world is unlike anything you get from a book or a movie; you’re just transported to another world with another level of experience. It’s just an amazing thing.
Roberta: Now do consoles dome with screen readers?
Eliza: Now this is where we take a turn to the disappointing, I have to say Roberta. I’m afraid that for listeners who are blind and rely on screen readers to use computers, your options are pretty limited with games. You won’t be able to play mainstream games, so instead the options are limited to games that have been specifically produced for blind gamers. There’s a fantastic resource called AudioGames.net, which is computer games based on sound, and there’s a lively international community of blind gamers around games that you can really use just on sound, but they don’t have the visual element. So in that way they are perfectly accessible. That doesn’t make up for being excluded from mainstream gaming, but it’s still a fun form of entertainment.
Roberta: Are some gaming consoles better than others, would you think?
Eliza: Now, because the biggest gaming consoles, the Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox, you’re going to find one of those in almost all Australian homes these days, and unfortunately they’re pretty much equally bad. In the lead-up to Christmas AbleGamers actually released a warning saying that gamers with disabilities should not buy these latest consoles because the accessibility of them has actually gone backwards. Microsoft released accessibility information about the Xbox Kinect console which like the Nintendo Wii uses a camera to project the player’s image onto the screen. Yeah, so it doesn’t use a hand-held controller; in essence your body is the controller, which my little nephew absolutely loves. But again, we’re not seeing accessibility extended to blind players. It’s almost as though gaming is the final frontier for accessibility; we’re not seeing the progress we’ve had in say, websites or movies. A lot of what AbleGamers does is design accessible controllers to compensate for the inaccessibility of the PlayStation and the Xbox. This has been usually beneficial for people with mobility impairment, but I’m afraid it won’t do much to comfort our blind listeners.
Roberta: Well, let’s hope things change in the future.
Eliza: Yes.
Roberta: Thank you for all of that Eliza. For more information about the world of accessible gaming visit AbleGamers.com, and for general information on media and technology visit the Media Access Australia website, mediaaccess.org.au, or call Eliza and the team on (02) 9212 6242. And Media Access Australia is a supporter of this programme.