In my study of many of the more popular textbooks on game design, I found that accessibility is not included as a core component or discussion piece beyond a cursory mention. However, one aspect that is shared by many of these textbooks is defining a design process for creating games—usually involving diagrams, flowcharts, and iteration in the process. Following from the idea of accessibility as a foundational aspect of good design, whichever game design process is followed can be retrofitted to include numerous points of critical reflection, playtesting, and diversity of opinion that can reinforce accessibile design throughout the process.
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s (2003) Rules of Play is a commonly used textbook for game design fundamentals. It breaks design down into three major facets: the rules that organize the game system, the play/experience of the people playing the game, and the culture or context surrounding the game itself (p. 6). As a textbook, Rules of Play is excellent at getting students to think through the game design process and imagine how the various elements of a game work together. It also helped to promote the critical study of games as designed entities with an impact on the wider world outside of the game itself as a single experience. Although accessibility is not addressed directly, the book does create a space for game critique that builds off of the culture surrounding a game, or the individual experience of a player that is separate from the game itself. Both vital aspects in broadening the view of what games can do.
A more recent textbook that is also heavily used in game design circles is Jesse Schell’s (2008) The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Schell offers many, many lenses for studying games or for studying how you as a designer want to create a game, but accessible design is not one of them. Accessibility is one of the provided lenses (p. 257), but is used in terms of being relatable or understandable to the player (e.g. making a puzzle that resembles other types of activities the player may be familiar with). Schell does however provide the lens of the player (p. 131) and uses it to highlight one key aspect of design: the designer is not the user. This distinction is important for teaching designers to empathize with their players as diverse individuals who will bring unique perspectives to the play experience (p. 123).
Mary Flanagan’s (2009) Critical Play has been discussed throughout this webtext and her "Critical Play Game Design Process" outlines a reflexive, iterative approach to designing games—particularly games designed to be subversive or critical of dominant systems. She outlines a basic iterative cycle for game design where the design team sets goals, make rules, create and playtest prototypes, and then revise. (p. 255). Critiquing this model, Flanagan writes: “The iterative cycle would do better to become more open, more reflective at this point in the evolution of playculture, given the long history of the technical benefits, increases in inclusion, and widening of social discourse achieved by alternate design methods”(p. 256). Instead, her proposed Critical Play Game Design Process seeds opportunities for differing viewpoints, discussions of values, and opportunities for subversion on the part of the playtesters. This revised process allows for both more critical reflection on the part of the designers, and also numerous points where playtesters, consultants, or other diverse perspectives can influence the game’s eventual design (this model is seen prominently in board game funding via Kickstarter where those funding the game often weigh in on design elements). More traditional design processes like those outlined in the other textbooks are not necessarily at odds with this model, but Flanagan’s critical model allows for designers to recognize gaps in their own knowledge that could be better filled by seeking outside perspectives and then sincerely taking those perspectives and their feedback into account during the design process.
Following from accessibility as a foundational aspect of good design and in line with Flanagan’s model, diverse bodies and abilities could be one such aspect seeded into the game design process in order to test for accessibility throughout. This could be accomplished in a few ways. First, bringing players with specific accessibility needs into the design process as playtesters in order to identify potential issues with the game. Second, there are many design tools that also exist for testing design elements for common accessibility issues such as color and contrast. These tools could be deployed throughout the process in order to consistently reinforce the need for accessible components. Finally, board games specifically highlight a range of accessibility issues with their use of physical components including mobility and dexterity requirements for using game elements and size/contrast issues for printed materials. As such, printed elements for playtesting (even rough mockups) are vital for playtesting throughout the design process to keep the eventual goal of material, tangible components as part of the game in mind.
In each of these books, the game design process is outlined broadly enough to allow for numerous points of customization allowing for accessibility to be interspersed throughout the process. I used passages from many of these textbooks, alongside some of the significant scholarly and professional work that has been done to promote accessible game design, in order to give my students a more well-rounded perspective on game design. Although work on accessibility specifically is not very prominent in textbooks on game design, it has grown to encompass several notable projects such as the Game Accessibility Guidelines (2021). The guidelines present three categories of implementation including basic, intermediate, and advanced, broken down by type of skill the design seeks to make accessible and the reach, impact, and value of the design element. A major benefit of the guidelines is they provide a great overview on accessible game design that can slot into a company’s established design process. The guidelines also try to account for the complexity of game design, noting that designers should “Review the guidelines before any work starts. If you do this at game design document stage then the work needed is greatly reduced, as many guidelines can be met just by a simple design decisions. The later in the project the more likely retrofitting will be needed, so costs increase significantly with time” (Game Accessibility Guidelines, "Why and how?"). The guidelines further make mention of the costs associated with design, which reflects the reality of companies operating under crunch to get a game out on time. I find this professional angle to be useful for students to keep in mind, even though I prefer to share sources such as Paul Cairns et al’s (2019) accessible game design vocabulary article as it focuses squarely on access as a means to enjoyable play (p. 68).
The Meeple Like Us Heuristic
For working with board games specifically, Meeple Like Us provides a wealth of game reviews written through the lens of accessible design. These “accessibility teardowns” examine the game over a range of accessibility concerns with the goal of providing a comprehensive overview/review of the game according to its overall accessibility. Their initial heuristic (Heron et al, 2018) was further refined through the Meeple Like Us blog and is available on their website: Meeple Centered Design Heuristic. I provide their full heuristic to my students along with some example terdowns from the site for students to model their own writeups after. In brief, the heuristic for Meeple Centered design covers the following aspects:
- Visual accessibility, including issues of color blindness, contrast, and font choice.
- Cognitive accessibility, focusing on required literacy for the game, memory issues, and complexity.
- Emotional accessibility, relating to issues with frustration, challenge, upsetting themes, and how players can lose the game.
- Physical accessibility, in both gross and fine-grained motor skills for manipulating components or accessing the game board.
- Communication requirements, such as the reading level for the game and the extent to which players can or can't communicate with each other during the game.
- Socioeconomic accessibility, with regards to cultural inclusion and economic considerations, particularly in theme or artwork.
- Intersectional accessibility, in which particular combinations of impairment may have additional impact (Heron, 2018).
Beyond examining the game for each of these accessibility concerns, Heron and his team emphasize the “intersectionality” (Meeple Like Us, 2021) of these concerns—that is, players can be impacted by these concerns in various, overlapping ways. And those issues can in turn spur further difficulties with playing the game. As such, the teardowns can provide an overview of accessibility issues in a game but should not be used in place of robust user testing, nor do they preclude specific unique issues that may arise for players actually playing the game. Nevertheless, their long list of teardown examples—including both popular and hobbyist games—alongside their heuristic provided an excellent framework for my students to examine accessible design in board games. As a visual design class students primarily focused on visual impairments, but thanks to the robust heuristic they additionally were able to delve into issues such as physical and cognitive impairments in their games’ designs that provided additional contextual examination of design.
In keeping with the concept of critical making and the fact that we were studying accessible design through board games, students were encouraged to play the board games they wanted to redesign with friends and family in order to capture accessibility issues as they arose through play. We also spent a day in-class at the start of the project where I provided board games for students to playtest for accessibility issues. Students could use these occurrences to note accessibility issues with the games without needing to disclose any sorts of disabilities themselves, unless they wanted to bring this perspective into the report. During classroom play students worked together so everyone in the group had a chance to play the game, but could also just observe others play if necessary. Students could further team up and study the same game as someone else in class so they had someone to play with for the assignment. I felt that this provided a good balance of giving all students hands-on experience with the games while also acknowledging that the accessibility issues present in many board games could exclude students from participating in the play of these games.
