Game accessibility

[5] As games are increasingly used as education tools, there may be a legal obligation to make them accessible, as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act mandates that schools and universities that rely on federal funding must make their electronic and information technologies accessible.

This transforms the very nature of playing video games into a fight against a digitally divided culture while seeking their own magic circle.

[9] Video game accessibility problems can be grouped into three categories that correlate to a specific type of impairment:[10] In the US, the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) brought up-to-date accessibility guidelines to advanced communication services (ACS), which is considered to include video games with communication elements including text and voice chat and the user interface (UI) elements to reach the chats.

[13] The unique limitations of the target group make such projects interesting, instructive and challenging for students.

[15] Electronic Arts announced in August 2021 that it will offer five patents related to accessibility, including the ping system introduced in Apex Legends, for free to all developers to use without fear of litigation indefinitely, as well as plans to promote any future patents related to accessibility within video games in the same manner.

The controller is split into two parts with the ability to customize the physical layout of buttons to the user's preference.

[31] Due to the nature of video games though, some of the guidelines are intentionally broken by developers to present a challenge.

In the remake, this indication is removed to encourage communication and present more of a challenge, at the cost of accessibility.

Based on this interaction design model three unique types of high-level accessibility barriers can be identified.

More discussion on the topic aids in "justifying the need to address these challenges in the breadth of game culture".

In recent years, game accessibility has become a topic of increasing interest to the academic research community.

[citation needed] It is recommended that collaborating with people who have disabilities can vastly improve the results of accessibility initiatives.