Players With Disabilities (Beeston)

Whether it involves crowding around arcade machines or playing online with your friends, gaming is a heavily social activity for most gamers – although this cannot be said for everyone. UKIE suggests that there are between 2.2 – 2.6 billion gamers worldwide, though of this estimate, it is difficult to ascertain what percentage consider themselves disabled, and therefore it is difficult to estimate just how restricted certain games can be for them.

It is supposed that physical or mental impairment would surely detract from a person’s ability to be social – whether that is going to an arcade with friends or simply communicating with other players online. Research carried out by Jen Beeston supports this as her research shows that in a sample of 230 disabled gamers, 195 played single player games more often than multiplayer ones, which would suggest a correlation.

Whilst this is the case, the games industry has made strides towards making games more universally accessible, though findings suggest a focus on issues they are “immediately aware of” such as colour blindness or hearing impairments rather than limb disabilities, which Beeston’s sample suggests is the most common form of disability amongst gamers.

Many disabled gamers have made a point of using assistive technology to aid in their experience – “eye gaze tracking” and various “customized controllers” are examples of such, though are rarely supplied with the games or consoles they buy. Largely, people with disabilities are left to get themselves on equal footing, which can cost a significant amount of time and money.

Beeston’s research also shows a clear overlap between the sample’s favourite games and the best-selling games of 2017 (Rockstar’s GTA V, for example), suggesting that the interests of disabled gamers are similar to those of non-disabled gamers. Because of this,  it is clear that more effort should be put into the development of assistive technology and accessibility settings in games – after all, games have the power to create “a sense of wellbeing”, the likes of which should be universally available.

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• Beeston, J. et al. ‘Characteristics and Motivations of Players with Disabilities in Digital Games Work in Progress’, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.11352.pdf 
• Grand Theft Auto V. 2013. Rockstar.