Talking accessibility in gaming with Britt Dye at PAX East 2024

Accessibility in video games is an important topic that has been getting a lot more attention in some corners of game development. However, the process of how a game becomes accessible is still not well known. At PAX East 2024, I got a chance to speak with the Chief Accessibility Officer of Whitethorn Games, Britt Dye, about the process. I came away from the conversation with further appreciation of the efforts that go into building more accessible games for everyone. 

On the ever hot-button issue of sacrificing difficulty for accessibility, Dye refers to the work of Ian Hamilton, a longtime accessibility advocate. In a 2021 talk, Hamilton explained that there is a stark difference between accessibility and difficulty. The developer intentionally creates a game’s difficulty to impact a player’s progress. Conversely, inaccessibility is an often unintentional impediment on the player’s ability to try to progress. 

It should be easy to agree that developers do desire that players can actually play their games. Dye explains that much of the work she does with developers involves digging into these design roadblocks and working solutions for them into the development process. This is an exciting time for this area. There is still a lot of exploration being done in search of solutions. Dye made sure to stress that there are no formulas or common best practices — no one size fits all fixes for accessibility. 

While there are not yet common standards, there are new innovations that help. Hardware such as Microsoft and Sony’s adaptive controllers give significantly more options to players who may have issues with conventional control schemes. Microsoft in particular (Dye made it clear she had not yet had a chance to evaluate Sony’s version) has a software layer that goes beyond linking up existing control maps to different buttons on the hardware side. 

Even so, Dye says that something that can be done on the game’s side that helps in many ways is simply supporting full remapping. Allowing a player to fine-tune which buttons on their controllers apply to each action helps remove many barriers alone. Other considerations, such as extending remapping to include movement with either the analog stick or directional pad rather than just one, really increases the options available to players with mobility issues. 

To better identify gaps in accessibility, Dye and her nascent team use their own reviews and small testing groups. From those test groups, developers can apply that feedback to accessibility concerns just as they would for other aspects of a game. These sessions can happen at various stages of development. However, often are with the hope to not radically set back the development process. That can happen though, if accessibility is not a consideration sooner. 

Those considerations extend to players as well. Dye recommends that players who do care about accessibility features should continue to drive the conversation forward. This is best in the places where other discussion of development happens — social media, our Discord chats, YouTube, and forums. Talk about features that help your own experience better! Correcting misinformation can also be beneficial, even though it means possibly educating even further on the topic. 

If these conversations do continue, the hard work of Britt Dye and others in the industry will continue to grow to the same level of importance we put on other aspects of game creation. Games will take accessibility into account sooner and with more dedication than they do now. This will lead to more options and more players. That’s only a positive for all of us.