Just in time for National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the fine folks at DAGERSystem — known in the disabled gaming community for their stellar reviews – have released the Accessible Games Database.
Finding out if a game is for you or not becomes infinitely more complicated when you’re a disabled gamer. Barriers to entry seldom find themselves included in the information made easily digestible during a game’s launch window. It often requires a lot of preview and impressions readings and developer blog and notes readings in order to piece together what may be on offer in terms of in-game customization to address types of disabilities I’ve spoken about in past articles and reviews. But in case you haven’t, these are auditory [deaf and hard of hearing], visual (blindness, colourblindness), fine motor (aka me and my tremors) and finally, neurodiversity.
Failure to provide customization in order to address accessibility issues can result in situations like Arkane Studio’s recent interaction with the community on the inaccessible nature of Deathloop.
The Accessible Games Database, which is organized alphabetically and with filters, breaks games down using these categories of disability.
DAGERSystem started way back in 2012 by Southwest Minnesota State University graduate Josh Straub, who had recently finished an internship at GameInformer and was looking to continue his games journalism through the lens of game accessibility. Closely following the ideals of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, DAGERSystem hopes that the work they do between their reviews and the new database will create an ecosystem where professionals with disabilities are hired because their disability gives them a unique perspective on the challenges facing disabled gamers.
