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Accessibility in video games: a systematic review

Universal Access in the Information Society volume 19, pages 169–193 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Video games are software products with several purposes that are growing in strength and weight in society. However, there is one noticeable problem about them; in most cases, their developers most often do not take into consideration people with disabilities when they are creating video game applications. People with disabilities are thus partially or completely excluded from their use. Prior to any additional work, it is required to have an updated state of the art about this topic. This paper shows the results of a systematic literature review conducted to define the current status of video games accessibility. The type of review is broader than usual, so it is a systematic mapping study (a specific class of systematic review). Besides elaborating the state of the art (qualitative information), we identified and analyzed related works (45 relevant studies) to provide quantitative information of the performed search (including graphs and tables), such as the number of articles found by phases, their sources, their research type, the research questions answered, the kind of disability addressed, and the type and year of publications. None of the studied initiatives can guarantee universally accessible video game applications. Our proposal is to create an integral software engineering methodology that considers accessibility guidelines, techniques, strategies, human factors, etc. in the video game software development process.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the EC-funded project ESVI-AL (ALFA III program), the PMI and TIFyC research groups at the University of Alcalá (UAH) and the Master’s Programme in Software Engineering for the Web, of the University of Alcalá (UAH). In addition, the authors are thankful for the funding of the research process to the ESVI-AL observatory and the access to the search resources to the UAH, without which it would have been impossible to consult the bibliography and reach the knowledge acquired during the review. Finally, we would like to also thank Euan Short for his invaluable help in the paper translation process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Superior Polytechnic School, University of Alcalá, 28871, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Juan Aguado-Delgado, José-María Gutiérrez-Martínez, José R. Hilera, Luis de-Marcos & Salvador Otón

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  1. Juan Aguado-Delgado
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Correspondence to Juan Aguado-Delgado.

Appendix: Table of references

Appendix: Table of references

In this section additional information is attached, which may be of use for understanding the process of bibliographic review described in this paper.

The information given is a reduced version (without the columns of subjective content) of the references table generated in that process, in which the data of the works comprehensively reviewed can be found. In Table 11, the publications are situated according to the order in which they were read.

Table 11 Studies analyzed in depth during SLR
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Aguado-Delgado, J., Gutiérrez-Martínez, JM., Hilera, J.R. et al. Accessibility in video games: a systematic review. Univ Access Inf Soc 19, 169–193 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-018-0628-2

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Keywords

  • Video games
  • Accessibility
  • Human–computer interface
  • Systematic mapping study
  • Systematic literature review
  • Interdisciplinary projects