Abstract
The chapter departs from an evaluation of the status quo of inclusive gaming: Despite the achievements and efforts in accessible game design and development along with the ongoing economic and sociopolitical trend toward inclusive gaming, most commercial games still lack the much-required adaptive infrastructures and individual reconfigurability. Additionally, the chapter alludes to the complicated relationship between copyright laws, legal free access to telecommunication technologies, and the necessity to (sometimes illegally) alter protected hard- and software as a means of enabling individuals to play. In doing so, she discusses to what extent workarounds or hacks can be considered a violation of rights or a representation of the right to ‘access the technological self,’ demonstrating that the legal aspect of accessibility can also become an ethical issue. Consequently, this raises the question of the legal clarification or even definition of ‘accessibility,’ which might be misleading, as accessibility or rather enabling gaming has from the very beginning been a process of creativity, adaptability, and playfulness and should resist outdated hierarchical and one-dimensional notions of the same
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Notes
- 1.
See the screenshot of the now-deleted comment at: https://web.archive.org/web/20210415042328if_/https:/www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/mqezg2/ohio_banned_in_path_of_exile_for_using_a_macro/, accessed June 20, 2022.
- 2.
“I can’t use one hand and some fingers on the other after an industrial accident. I do things on the computer using a mouse and 3 foot pedals. I play this game called Path of Exile, and in the game you need to refresh 4 potion buffs every 3–8 seconds. I physically can’t press 4 keys every few seconds so I use a macro that automatically does it for me” (https://web.archive.org/web/20210415042328if_/https:/www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/mqezg2/ohio_banned_in_path_of_exile_for_using_a_macro/, accessed June 20, 2022).
- 3.
“It took 15 years, but it finally happened: A troll posed as a disabled gamer just for laughs. Dozens of you sent me messages asking me to contact @pathofexile, and they investigated and determined it was a troll. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this angry before” (Twitter, 16 April 2021).
- 4.
See: https://slate.com/technology/2021/04/video-game-disability-law-accessibility-path-of-exile.html, accessed June 20, 2022.
- 5.
While digital gaming, in particular, was mostly associated with a lack of child and youth protection as well as addiction problems before the pandemic, COVID-19 placed a special focus on accessibility issues, on the one hand, but also—and this is shown by the WHO’s #PlayApartTogether Campaign—on the social impact of games.
- 6.
Massive corporations, like Sony, Microsoft, and Logitech, have created accessible tech for the disabled community; gamers with disabilities are organizing themselves into communities, such as Can I Play That? (CIPT, https://caniplaythat.com/), initiatives have been established, such as AbleGamers (https://ablegamers.org/), Makers Making Change (https://makersmakingchange.com/), and those on social media, such as r/disabledgamers (Reddit), and even streaming “gaming accessibility advocate[s]” (Stoner, 2021) have been created on platforms like Twitch (see, e.g., https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/08/how-game-makers-are-catering-to-disabled-players/). However, work remains to fully commit to providing an accessible and welcoming home, namely for disabled streamers.
- 7.
According to a survey conducted by Censuswide in December 2020 of a total of 1326 gamers (812 disabled, 514 non-disabled), 66% of gamers with disabilities say they face barriers or issues related to gaming, and the biggest one is the affordability of assistive or adapted technology.
- 8.
- 9.
In fact, the debate about accessibility has been going on for the last 10–15 years. Computer game magazines or computer manuals of the 1980s and 1990s rarely contain anything about it, and then the topic often revolves around Nintendo’s hands-free controller, which, however, was not intended for the mass market (see Spöhrer in this volume).
- 10.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgg/BJNR146800002.html, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 11.
The BITV came into force in 2002, and the latest amendment is from 2019 (https://www.whoisaccessible.com/guidelines/bitv-2-0/, accessed 22 June 2022).
- 12.
- 13.
Of course, one could also ask whether interacting with the controller should not already be considered a communication process or whether it is solely a matter of person-to-person communication in legal matters.
- 14.
To which games does the obligation apply? Initially, all games with communication functions that have been first launched onto the market on or after 01 January 2019 are affected. The regulation intentionally describes the communication functions only very vaguely in order to be able to cover future developments (such as in the XR area). However, even older titles must remove existing barriers if a “substantial upgrade” takes place. Only the FCC’s enforcement practice will show exactly what is meant by this term. For example, it seems questionable whether a pure content update of an online game (maps, items, quests, etc.), even if extensive, will trigger the accessibility obligation, since this does not involve any significant intervention in the actual programming. However, if new features are introduced, especially if they have to do with communication functions, it is assumed that this constitutes a substantial upgrade.
- 15.
See: Contra* Podcast, Critical Design Lab, https://www.mapping-access.com/podcast/2020/6/8/contra-podcast-episode-211-contrahistory-with-elizabeth-guffey-and-bess-williamson, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 16.
See: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/hardware-cost-disabled-gamers-a-barrier-some-users-1190595/, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 17.
- 18.
In total, the US company is releasing five patents that are intended to support players with visual, speech, or hearing impairments in their gaming. In addition to the patents, EA is making open-source code available on GitHub, which developers can use to improve their contrast and color blindness settings. This is intended to spur industry-wide collaboration as well as drive innovation for accessibility in video games, EA wrote in a statement (Herbig, 2021).
- 19.
See: https://accessible.games/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/AbleGamers_Includification.pdf, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 20.
See: https://makersmakingchange.com/assistive-devices/?_sft_type=adapted-toys, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 21.
In 2012, the aforementioned FCC adopted rules implementing the CVAA, which required ACS (advanced communication services) and equipment used for ACS to be accessible to persons with disabilities.
- 22.
These individual short-term (or longer-term) solutions and workarounds, discussions, build instructions, and suggestions can be found on AbleGamers, Makers Making Change, CIPT, and r/disabledgamers, among others.
- 23.
You can find tutorials on Hackerbot (https://hackerbot.net/tutorials/353-speed-up-hack-slow-down-cheat, accessed 22 June 2022), speed hack software, like Speed Gear (https://speed-gear.software.informer.com/Sicherer-download/), and macros, which “automate boring tasks” and “replicate them in real-time” (https://www.bluestacks.com/features/macros.html, accessed 22 June 2022).
- 24.
The FIFA series has been around since 1993, but FUT Mode has only been available since 2008.
- 25.
Purchasable in-game items have become the norm on all platforms, but they are only referred to as pay-to-win if they create real advantages in the game. The opposite are purely cosmetic items, which have long existed in World of Warcraft (Blizzard, 2004). For example, special mounts or pets do not have better stats and, therefore, do not bring any advantages. The same applies to the popular Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017) skins, which only alter one’s appearance.
- 26.
In her critique of technoscience, Jasbir Puar shows the way in which the calculation and (pre-)determination of abilities or incapacities lead to a constant (re)production of the relation of abled bodies and dis/abled bodies Puar (2016).
- 27.
The gaming industry, which has been growing for years, is tipped to maintain its recent rapid growth, as detailed in a new PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) report (https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/tmt/media/outlook/outlook-perspectives.html, accessed 22 June 2022).
- 28.
However, in the early to mid-2000s, most of the revenue was made during the first months of triple-A releases. With the growing importance of new mobile devices and increasing platformization, indirect monetization models were introduced with the dominating model called game as a service (GaaS; Bernevega & Gekker, 2022).
- 29.
Here, Chandra borrows from Donna Reeve’s concept of the “impaired cyborg” and, thus, a cyborg identity that represents a new way of being or becoming and destabilizes the binary of disabled/non-disabled (Reeve, 2012).
- 30.
See: https://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/master-modder-ben-heck-creates-one-handed-ps4-controller-disabled-gamers/, accessed 22 June 2022.
- 31.
You can find fruitful insights and further information on websites like https://accessible.games/accessible-player-experiences/ (accessible player experience design patterns from AbleGamers and York University); accessiblegamedesign.com (UX focused guidelines from Ruthie Edwards); the YouTube channel Game Maker’s Toolkit (video game accessibility); and the Game Accessibility Conference (https://www.gaconf.com/; expanding into Europe with GAconf EU).
- 32.
See the video of the keynote lecture: https://streaming.uni-konstanz.de/talks-und-events/2022/chds-international-colloquium-2022/chds-international-colloquium-2022-04-21-02/.
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Ochsner, B. (2024). Providing Access. In: Spöhrer, M., Ochsner, B. (eds) Disability and Video Games. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34374-2_11
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