Rationale

As my MA comes to a close, I would like to reflect on my project. To understand why I began this research, we must first understand the rationale behind it. This idea is one very close to my heart for personal reasons.

Video games were a huge part of my childhood. My parents and I would spend hours playing network games on our PCs but this became difficult when my mother became ill. She always loved to play games such as Diablo, Unreal Tournament and Warcraft, but this became limited by physical disabilities, especially due to hand tremors.

A game interface is the bridge between the player and the game so, if it does not fit the needs of a player, it is useless. In my experience gaming does not cater to disabilities and I would like to change this. The idea of removing limitations to allow people with disabilities to play games is a ground breaking and necessary step that, I believe, should already have been taken.

In recent years, game studios have been trying to improve accessibility in their games. Options such as rebinding keys, font size, captions, scalable UI, colour blindness options and disabling flashing lights have become more common in gaming and, while this is a brilliant first step, it is not enough.