Games for people with disabilities?

Fatty McBeardo

Are there any quality titles out there that are either accessible to or made specifically for people with disabilities?

To narrow that broad term down, I'm specifically curious about games for people with visual impairment, partial or complete hearing loss, or partial paralysis/loss of use of the hands.

nowayman xy

modern warfare 2?

edit: sorry, I couldn't help myself.

To answer your question, I haven't, personally, heard of any game being designed specifically with that purpose in mind. But I don't see how anyone could have a problem with any game that relies on a turn based system, i.e. not twitch play.

Inquisitor

While this is only loss of the use of one hand (left hand) I'd still say its an example of someone playing a game amazingly well (was active in the tournament scene) with a disability.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-ai2N0QxDg

Skip to the 1 minute mark to see what I am talking about. For something like disabilities it's really going to have to be a case by case basis to see what games and what control interfaces they can work well with.

November Fifth

Some games have a colorblind mode. I know World of Warcraft does.

They use the Wii for physical therapy with people who have MS or have had strokes.

miscellaneousinsanity

I don't know about games, but I know of some controllers designed to be used with one hand. Ben Heck modded a 360 controller a while back, and there are a couple of onehanded PS2 controllers on the market (those are more aimed towards strategy gamers though).

Fatty McBeardo

I had an idea for a game for blind people that would use a braille keyboard and music. It would be kind of like a 'simon says' type of game, except you'd create music with it. You press key combos in response to musical notes, and the key sequences create their own note combos until it becomes a musical phrase. The more successful you are the richer the music becomes, with accompanying instruments coming in as bonuses with multipliers, etc. Kind of like E4 but even more auditory, something like building a symphony from a single note.

I also thought of a game like Freespace that would rely on a combination of a computer voice and force feedback to guide you. Or it could have a co-op mode where someone who can see can help guide you, but they have their own restrictions within the game that make them rely on you for stuff.

It would be a pretty interesting challenge to make a game that is tailored to players with a particular disability while also making it broadly appealing enough to get published.

SmokeStacks

Doom 3 has a closed captions mod available for the hearing impaired, and last I heard the creator was working on one for Quake IV.

El Guaco

SmokeStacks wrote: »

Doom 3 has a closed captions mod available for the hearing impaired, and last I heard the creator was working on one for Quake IV.

"PEW PEW PEW" (sorry I couldn't resist)

Many puzzle games like Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest are designed with color blind people in mind. Wii controllers aren't limited to people with all their fingers & toes.

It would be an interesting challenge to design an arcade-like game that could literally be played by just about anyone regardless of their physical challenges.

Darmak

I believe I saw a mod for Quake that would allow blind people to play the game. It supposedly used sound really well, like echoing footsteps and such that would let you know if you were near walls and some other audible clues to let you know if you were near a dropoff of some sort. Let me see if I can find it, I remember I tried getting it to work with the Steam version of Quake but apparently it requires the disc version.

Darmak

While searching I found this link to BSC Games which makes games for the blind and visually impaired.

edit: I found the link for the quake mod right here, if anyone's interested in trying it out.

double edit: I also found the website AudioGames which might be something to look into. I didn't realize there were so many games for the visually impaired.

jothki

I wonder if anyone has made a text to speech client with voice interpretation for interactive fiction. It seems way too obvious an idea for it to not have already happened.

Darmak

Ooh, that's a pretty good idea. You're right, it seems too obvious to have not happened. I'll see if I can find anything.

smof

That one handed controller is very cool.

Darmak

I found this and this has a link to a text game interpreter with text to speech built into it, and so does this page (scroll down a bit for that one).

edit: Apparently it has been done before, jothki, no worries. I can't vouch for how good any of these are but they're out there.