Play for all

 Did you know that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2018, there were 217 million people with moderate to severe visual impairment and 36 million with blindness? Many of these people with visual impairments play video games not only as a leisure activity, but also as a means of socialising.

A study published by BePlayerOne in 2020 shows that 67% of people with visual impairments consider video games to be insufficiently accessible, while 22% consider them to be fully inaccessible. More generally, 91% of respondents think that disability is a partial or total barrier to playing video games.

It’s hard to give an idea of what the gaming experience is like, but Steve Saylor has tried an experiment to illustrate it in the video opposite.

It’s an accessibility plug-in for Unity3D which is video game development software widely used by development studios and developers.

This tool enables game developers to incorporate accessibility functions so that people with visual impairments can get a better grasp of interface management and game navigation, whether it’s for leisure or Serious Games such as Games With Impact, for example.

Play4All provides a range of options, including text editing, a screen reader and sound cues for interfaces and gameplay. It’s a tool whose ease of use should make it popular with development studios and developers alike. All the settings can be customised by players via an in-game options menu.

It is also accompanied by a guide to good accessibility practices to adopt when creating a game, as well as instructions for use.

This project was a winner of the RIAM CNC window in 2019.