"accessibility" needs to stop meaning "low-engagement"
"we are making our TTRPG more accessible!"
"oh, did you make the font bigger and more legible?"
"no we're just doing the next edition in D&D5e"
"we're making our video game more accessible!"
"oh did you add an option to remap the controls?"
"no we just added an option to remove combat so the game is just a bunch of cutscenes"
"we made it accessible!"
"which part? what did you make accessible?"
"why, not playing the game at all of course! games are much better when they don't have any pesky game in them, especially for the disabled, who typically access the game parts even less."
To further elaborate (very long)
it is a very popular trend right now to add, like, features that skip the engagement with an interactive work of art, such as skipping combat or making combat impossible to lose in a combat-focused video game, or in the scene of TTRPGs making your TTRPG completely dumbed down or just hastily and mindlessly making it a D&D5e hack "because people already know how to play D&D5e and I want it to be accessible" instead of expecting people to actually read and learn and engage with a set of specific rules, and call all of that "accessibility" instead of adding "accessibility" features that would actually help disabled people access the "meat" of whatever the interactive art is.
If it's a combat-focused video game, some examples would be helping them engage with the full depth of the combat by allowing the controls to be fully remapped to something easier for their hands(or lack of hands), or the option to disable flashing lights or reduce the intensity muzzle flashes on the guns or something.
I think I have come up with a good example to illustrate this point. Let's say there is an FPS where you shoot aliens. Pretend it's, like, Halo but not specifically Halo.
And let’s say there’s a group of disabled gamers who are excited for this video game.
Missing Finger Guy, Deaf Guy, Colorblind Guy, and Poor Eyesight Guy.
Missing Finger Guy is missing at least one finger that corresponds to the Dodge button, he can’t reliably press it especially on short notice when aliens are coming at his character. So, he can’t really play the game because dodging is required to beat the levels. The game devs provide an “acccessibility” easy mode that turns off combat or makes the enemies do so little damage that he never needs to use the Dodge button. So, Missing Finger Guy can play the game now, right? Wrong. Dodging enemies *is* the game, and he still never gets to play with the Dodge button, or engage with any of the other elements of the game that are watered down by making enemy attacks not matter. To make the fun gameplay of dodging enemies accessible to this player, the answer is to allow remapping the Dodge action to a button that he can reach.
Deaf Guy
The game expects the player to rely on audio cues to know when enemies are sneaking up behind them or when a grenade lands at their feet or when an enemy is about to do a specific attack. Obviously the deaf player can’t hear these and can’t play the game because he’ll just die all the time to attacks which are literally impossible for him to predict. Again, this could be “fixed” by a mode that makes it so it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t hear a grenade land at his character’s feet by removing the consequence of death for failing to notice the grenade, or you could add the option to turn on subtitles for both story dialogue and sound effects like “[grenade beep]” and “[screatchure scream].” One of these allows the deaf gamer to play on roughly the same playing field as other players and react to threats the same way that hearing people can do that he can engage with the meat of the game, and the other doesn’t.
Colorblind Guy
The video game features enemies that are identifiable by their red and blue armor. Red aliens throw red grenades that you can catch and throw back, and blue aliens throw blue grenades that explode by proximity and you just have to fully avoid. Obviously, a colorblind player cannot reliably tell these apart, and would either have to try to throw back grenades at random and hope for the best, or just avoid all grenades to be safe. You could “fix” this by removing the consequence of death for getting exploded by a grenade, or you could fix it by adding a togglable colorblindness mode that switches the color distinction to something visible or adds some other distinctive feature besides color to one of those grenade types. One of these allows the colorblind player to engage with the intended gameplay of the game by taking informed risks by trying to throw back certain grenades, and one of them doesn’t, making it just not matter what decision he makes.
Poor Eyesight Guy
You get the formula by now. The *actually* accessible feature would be allowing him to adjust the text to be more readable instead of making it not matter if he can read the directions that tell him how to get through the minefield safety by removing the consequences for stepping on a mine.
A mode that simply removes consequences for failing to engage with and react appropriately to the threats the game presents is, at best, appealing only to people who don’t actually *like* the gameplay in the first place, while still shutting out the people who *want* to engage with the full depth of the gameplay but can’t because of some disability that prevents them from doing so as intended.
Because the gameplay isnt just seeing the cutscenes and getting a “level cleared” achievement, it is dodging the enemies, throwing back the grenades, listening for the screatchure screams, etc..
If there is an enemy who is super tough from the front and will kill you if you can’t get around behind him, you don’t make the game more “accessible” by making him so weak from the front that it doesn’t matter where you shoot him, or making his attacks so weak that you can shrug them off long enough to whittle him down from the front, youve actually removed this enemy from the game by making him just like the common enemies that can be shot from the front. You have actually made the element of the gameplay provided by this enemy inaccessible by doing this, because the quick thinking and tactical usage of the game’s features required to get behind him *is* the gameplay.
It’s much easier to explain this via video games but it goes for tabletop games as well. A TTRPG is more truly accessible for having big easy-to-read font and clear explanations so that players that want to engage with that game’s rules can do so even if they have reading difficulties, than if it just went “eh it doesn’t matter if you read the rules or not.”
Difficulty levels are not disability accomodations. OP explains that very well through their examples here.
I like difficulty levels, sometimes I don't enjoy a specific aspect of gameplay or I just want to blast through from cutscene to cutscene, and being able to toggle a zero-consequences baby mode is a nice option to have.
But most of the time I want to play the game, and to do that I need to remap half the controls. Let me remap them, don't treat me like I'm incapable of playing video games or like I don't deserve rewarding and engaging gameplay just because I can't move the mouse as precisely as the other guy.
It's like, you make a museum accesible by putting in ramps and elevators, not by telling wheelchair users that the art on the upper floors isn't all that great and they shouldn't want to see it in the first place.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and most people who follow me are very much of this opinion. But like... So much accessibility talk is not actually about letting people engage with your game who otherwise couldn't due to a disability or physical limitation. Rather, it's an idea of accessibility in the way a CEO would want a movie to be more accessible to a wider audience. As in like, "This movie's audience is too niche and it's ideas are too lofty, make it more accessible." Both of these are "accessibility" in a sense, but those are two VERY different definitions of the word, you know what I'm saying? Ideally, I'd like art which is naturally inaccessible through it's themes and difficulty and ideas to nonetheless be something people who have physical limitations (Or... Well, technological limitations, economic limitations, whatever else) can experience
Yes, this is a term that is being co-opted to prioritize corporate profits by appealing to a "wider audience" which includes people who don't actually like the product, while leaving disabled people shut out and, in many cases, calling them ableist for saying "an invincibility mode is not an accessibility setting, instead give me tools that will let me play the game without an invincibility mode the way everyone else who likes the gameplay can."
People in the tags are already going "hello i am the strawman from your post! I bought a game without realizing there was combat in it and i don't like combat so invincibility mode was an accessibility setting to me because it let me avoid the game i don't like!"
ACTUAL ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IN GAMES:
Option to hold or toggle buttons for running
Quick Time Events on a toggle, or not involving quick, successive button presses (just one press)
Ability to change the colour, font and size of subtitles!
Ability to re-map buttons
ABILITY TO USE A NONSTANDARD CONTROLLER
Ability to change brightness, colour saturation, lighting intensity and filtering
ABILITY TO TURN OFF FLASHING LIGHTS OH MY FUCKING GOD
Volume control that lets you turn up the dialogue and atmospheric sound but turn the music down
Ability to turn off camera shake and blur
And you might ask 'well how is x an accessibility feature'
But consider:
People who have issues with their hands (muscle weakness, missing fingers, impaired reflexes)
Folks who are hard of hearing or have other hearing issues
Epileptics and other folks with light-sensitive seizures
