It’s easy for the majority to forget about the needs of the minority. Just ask Josh Straub. In a recent article he wrote for Brutal Gamer, Josh details the issues faced by millions of disabled gamers across the world.
“Would you be nearly as excited [about an upcoming game] if you knew that, when you purchased the game, there is only a fifty percent chance that your controller would be compatible with it?” Because of his disability, many games that Josh enjoys playing present challenges to him that other players of the games don’t face.
Quick-time events, for instance, plague Josh during his gaming. “Many games that are full of QTEs represent a big gamble for me because when I buy them I may not be able to progress through them.” He needed to get help progressing through one of his favorite games, The Last of Us , because the quick-time events to open doors required rapid button pressing he just couldn’t accomplish alone. Although Josh knows he is in the minority of gamers who had issues with these sections, he questions whether it would’ve been so difficult to adjust these events to be more accessible to a wider array of people.
Josh also doesn’t advocate dumbing games down to make them more accessible. For instance, one of his suggested solutions to The Lats of Us’ quck-time events involves the ability to turn these events off in the options. This simple solution would have provided the disabled players who needed it a way to complete the game without having to rely on others. And The Last of Us is hardly the only game with sections that disabled gamers have issues with.
For a greater investigation into game accessibility, including the different categories of disabled gamers and a more in-depth look at how to appropiately address the problem, head on over to Brutal Gamer .