Accessibility Teardowns
by Michael Heron on 08/04/2016 in Board Game Accessibility, Editorial
As part of our roster, we include academic researchers into inclusivity, accessibility, and human-centred computing. Some of these directly associated with the site, other are involved in a consultative capacity. It’s only natural then that some of us may look at the board games we play and think ‘Huh, that’s a problem’ every so often. It’s our intention after every review to do an accessibility tear-down that looks at each game and gives our view as to whether it’s something you can enjoy with people around you, regardless of their impairments or otherwise. The bad news is that almost every game has significant accessibility problems. The good news you’ll almost always find a pile of great games that work for the people around you. We are big believers that the solution to inaccessible game design is to raise the floor, not create ‘accessible gaming’ niches. Everybody wants to have access to the same cool games that their friends are playing, not their own accessible games that nobody else wants to play. There are accessible versions of Scrabble, Monopoly, Chess, Cluedo… but those aren’t the exciting games we look at. [...]