And why are we actually moving backwards?
Results so far have been mixed,with particular focus on the games' poor technical performance.
In particular, it’s disadvantageous to cognitively impaired gamers.
Cognitive accessibility is frequently left out of accessibility conversations.
Which drops cognitively impaired players into an overwhelming and unnavigable world.
I simply didn’t have the focus to process what I was doing."
A major issue for Alexa?
“My brain doesn’t really make mental maps of where things are in relation to each other.
Or it can include better social tools to help those for whom communication and socialising are more difficult.
This is something Dan, an autistic gamer, struggles with in Destiny’s raid system.
The scope of cognitive accessibility, like so many areas of accessibility, is broad.
That can be a challenge for developers.
Why have we reached the point where cognitive accessibility is so absent from games and discussions around them?
For Alexa, it’s partly because “a lot of cognitive accessibility features already exist.
But they aren’t always considered accessibility features.”
“I just want as many players as possible to experience the joy that comes from overcoming hardship.”
It’s a sentiment most developers would echo.
The system employed by Elden Ring, particularly, is an enormous barrier to cognitively impaired players.
It’s something Dan experiences when communicating his difficulties to the Destiny player-base.
“The community doesn’t see it as an accessibility issue,” Dan says.
Is there hope for the future?
Perhaps that depends on our own, individual outlook.
Alexa tells me howCelestehelped her when she “set the game speed to 90 percent of its full speed.
Dan points me to Pillars of the Earth.
“It can really give you time to consider what’s going on.”
Within an industry in which cognitive accessibility is so often rendered disposable, there are bright spots.
But until conversation around cognitive accessibility is normalised these may remain faint lights on an otherwise dim horizon.
It’s a bit like being new to a city.
But when you look for signs, they’re all gone because locals liked it that way.
It’s isolating, excluding, and, for many, impossible.
