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Today the first game I’ve ever worked on as a UX Designer, #AltFrequencies, is out! And since it’s #GAAD I wanted to make a short thread about our development process on accessibility features and how we included them in our design @gbla11yday
Alt-Frequencies is an audio-based game which has several accessibility features, especially for blind and low-vision gamers. The game is entirely playable using only sound.
Right at the beginning of the production, we wanted to include several accessibility features within our game, to make sure that as many people as possible could enjoy it.
I think it’s important to include accessibility as early as possible in the development, to have the time to iterate and properly create those accessibility features.
We’ve used the Game Accessibility Guidelines in the project to find which accessibility features we could include in the game. I highly recommend using this valuable resource early in the development process. gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
We’ve also playtested the game twice with blind players during the development. It’s really important to reach out to the community and have people give you feedback on your accessibility options.
We tried our best to provide a set of solutions and add as much customisation as possible, so each and every person can decide how they want to play our game and get the best experience out of it.
In the end, the game supports screen reading software on multiple platforms, thanks to TalkBack, NVDA and VoiceOver, but also provides different sets of controls (including full remapping on computer) and the possibility to enable closed-captions.
A more in-depth thread about the accessibility options will come in a few days!
Finally, I will be giving a more in-depth talk about our design process at Game Days Trnava at the end of the month and at GameCamp at the end of June. Once all of this is over, I’ll work on a proper blog post that details everything.
I also want to thank all the wonderful accessibility advocates out there, following your work really helps me being a better UX Designer and include accessibility in my projects!
I hope you’ll enjoy the game! If you have any feedback don’t hesitate to contact me. I really want to improve and I know I still have a lot to learn about accessibility in video games!
