Gamers with disabilities helped by Computer Science research at York

Posted on 16 February 2023

Accessible Player Experiences (APX) cards that improve the gaming experience of players with disabilities developed by AbleGamers based on research carried out at the University of York.

The Accessible Player Experiences (APX) cards are a pack of cards that are intended to provide inspiration to games designers to help them make their games more accessible to players with disabilities.

Each card represents what is called a design pattern: a way to inspire solutions to common problems that players with disabilities encounter in games. For example, Second Channel is a way for designers to think about provide more than one perceptual channel for any information that players rely on eg having audio alerts alongside flashing icons for people with low vision.

The cards were developed based on the research of Professors Paul Cairns and Chris Power, here at the University of York, building on the experience of Mark Barlet and Greg Haynes at The AbleGamers Charity.

AbleGamers was set up to provide support for disabled players to be able to get access to the games that they want to play and also to advocate with games companies for increased accessibility of games.

The APX cards are part of a wider training programme that AbleGamers have delivered to over 300 developers in major games studios across the globe.

As a result of which, the cards have now been translated into seven languages: Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German and Brazilian Portuguese.