No Barriers to Fun!

We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More
A Window to the World

Shepherd University invited the AbleGamers Foundation to come on campus and do one of our Accessibility Arcades for the students and local disabled community. The event was a roaring success with hundreds of children and adults coming out to see the technology and in some cases experience gaming the first time. Read More

About the AbleGamers Foundation

Since 2004, the AbleGamers Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, has served more than 56 million members of the disabled community by advocating greater access in video games. Today, AbleGamers is a leader in the development of equipment, programs and services to those living with disabilities, hardships, and quality-of-life issues that are a result of chronic illness or trauma. It is our goal to ensure that all people, regardless of their disability, can use gaming as a tool to have enriched social experiences with friends, family, and the world at large.

Sony Online Entertainment Talks to AbleGamers

Written by Annette Gonzalez

Published on 26 March 2009

Sony Online Entertainment's Keith Turkowski and Ryan Barker provided tips to GDC attendees Wednesday afternoon on using design to keep players immersed in MMORPGs. The duo discussed their experience with EverQuest and explained how to make games accessible and enjoyable to all gamers from casual to hardcore. A few approaches to achieve this include keeping content fresh, giving casual gamers the ability to catch up with the hardcore at a reasonable pace and offering rewards for achievements.

What about making MMORPGs accessible to the disabled gaming community?

AbleGamers spoke to Turkowski, game designer for SOE about accessibility in MMORPGs.

"We definitely try to make the games accessible," Turkowski says. "Over time games become more complex and become less accessible. So every time you put something new in a game, the game becomes less accessible. When the game is originally designed we try to make it accessible and what we try to do is maintain that."

He says as game designers, accessibility for gamers with disabilities does come into play. Artists run their art through a colorblind check for accessibility. Programmers also consider font types and sizes to ensure fonts are readable. Turkowski says in terms of game design, they consider ease and access of the interface.

During the discussion on player retention, Turkowski and Barker also encouraged developers to read through forums and listen to the player base.

Turkowski says vision impaired players had expressed their concerns in making EverQuest more accessible. There was a feature added for audio triggers. This allows gamers to type in text strings that would trigger an audio queue whenever the string appeared. He says colorblind players also expressed difficulty seeing certain items onscreen. The artist went ahead and changed the coloring.

"You're always trying to appeal to the customer base you have. Vision impairment is one of the disabilities we have addressed," Turkowski says. "You can't change your player base, as developers you have to change yourselves."