It's the year 2025! The year 2025 feels like a bladerunner title card number and couldn’t possible be the year we are living in but here we are. The wide world of games accessibility continues onward and we're jazzed to once again serve up an assortment of tasty games accessibility tidbits.

 

Because gaming is for everyone!

We have new faces on the PlayAblity Consultancy team!

We are excited to announce the addition of two new members to our team, Ross Minor and Laura Kate Dale.

 

Searching for a new Blind Barrier Expert after losing Brandon Cole last year was undoubtedly an emotional endeavour. Despite the sad circumstances, however, we are extremely excited to be welcoming Ross Minor into our team. Ross comes with a wealth of experience consulting on games of various genres and we have no doubt that Ross will carry on the torch of Brandon's advocacy legacy. If you want to know more about Ross and his work, you can check out his YouTube channel.

 

Moreover, we are sad to see our Cognitive Barrier Expert Hannah Dowers move on to new pastures but understand the need to embrace new career opportunities. We loved working with Hannah but are also thrilled to be adding Laura Kate Dale to our team. Laura brings a wealth of knowledge about cognitive barriers to our team and you may already know her as the host of the Access-Ability Summer Showcase. If not you can find out more on YouTube, where she is known as LauraKBuzz.

The Games Accessibility Conference Awards took place recently celebrating the past year of work around game development that raised the bar for accessibility. Congratulations to all the winners and hats off to everyone who put in the work to make games more accessible. If you missed the show you can watch it here.

EA made a fantastic addition to their ongoing accessibility pledge by making 23 patents royalty-free for developers.  

 

In particular the IRIS plugin for Unreal Engine 5 is great to see become available. IRIS gives developers tools to identify potential photosensitivity risks which we at PlayAbility hope becomes common practice to test for across the industry.

A new year also means GaConf Europe is almost around the corner. This year's edition takes place on 14th and 15th of April in London and you can still sign up for in-person attendance (for a fee) or online attendance (for free)! GaConf is always such a fantastic treasure trove of knowledge.

 

If you missed the US edition last fall, it had some fantastic talks. Amongst others we particularly enjoyed this one on Cognitively-Accessible UX in STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor which provided some great insight on balancing the cognitive load for players navigating those, at times, overwhelming AAA menus.

 

Another great talk was from Ian Hamilton on How To Line-Break Subtitles which covers in depth … well how to line break subtitles. Its a very well named talk. Line breaks can make a huge difference for players relying on subtitles to be fully engrossed in a games story.

Finally its always wonderful to see flagship industry giants still take the time to implement accessibility. Call of Duty Black Ops 6 provided some great support with both Asymmetrical Hearing Compensation and Reduce Tinnitus Sound for players. These efforts were acknowledged with Black Ops 6 receiving a nomination for AAA excellence at the GaConf awards, which we highlighted at the beginning of this newsletter … wow full circle!

 

Until next time go play some wonderful accessible games!