Showing posts with label Design Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design Tips. Show all posts

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

BlindComputerGames.com

Head shot of a young woman wearing headphones, and large wrap-a-round glasses with colourful Atari VCS style graphics in the lenses. From one of Atari's 1976 Video Music magazine adverts.

"blindcomputergames.com is an information resource that includes:

A set of guidelines for developers who want to improve blind accessibility in their games.

An article for gamers who are blind to help them show developers how to make their games accessible to them.

Articles that give developers technical information, including code samples, to help them make their games accessible.

For gamers, it gives the technical words they need to communicate with developers at companies, big and small. It explains who to talk to, what information the developer will need, and when in the development cycle to communicate with a developer and to have the best chance of obtaining the changes that will increase accessibility.

For developers, it explains screen readers and self-voicing, and includes a blind accessibility checklist, some good example games, technical “how to's”, and a short guide to blind etiquette.

It's totally free and requires no registration.

The project took three months and was done at the request of and with the help of Dark, the administrator for audiogames.net and the leading advocate for blind gamers.

He is frequently asked by developers, "What would it take?" Now he has a place to send them, and a place to send his readers who have a game or other software program that they can “almost use”.

Although it is focused on games, much of the information is applicable to any software, not just games.

Any feedback would be helpful."

Via: Eleanor Robinson - 7-128 Software on the IGDA GASIG mailing list.

Saturday, 19 June 2010

Design Tips For: Subtitled Games

Full subtitles (aka Closed Captions if you live in the USA or Canada) in a game, can make the world of difference to deaf and partially-hearing players. Now that games and films have so many parallels, imagine how hard it would be to follow a film without the sound-track. It's not much a stretch to imagine how hard some games become without sound.

My friend, Reid Kimball, has posted a really helpful Mockup of Heavy Rain with full closed captioning. It shows some of the importance of having the mood of music described, the sound effects as well as the essential dialogue.

Reid is offering a service to advise game developers upon how to best include deaf and partially-hearing players. He definitely knows his stuff, after having worked with the team that modified Doom 3 to include full subtitles, and spending many years supporting the IGDA's Game Accessibility Special Interest Group.