Intro

Last edited 2 days ago by Matthieu Jeunet

Accessibility is usability for everybody

Hey there,

I'm Matthieu, the creator of this accessibility guideline for mobile games. Before moving to the other tabs, please take 2 minutes to read this first:

As you know, free-to-play mobile games aim to reach the widest possible audience. Players with disabilities represent a minimum of 15% of mobile players worldwide. To put it in numbers, that's 420 million players out of the 2.8 billion mobile players. This number is likely higher as the

World Report on Disability⁠

is dated 2011, only included employees, excluded children and temporarily disabled people.

Here, we will consider disabilities as barriers people may face while playing. They are game mechanics or design choices that exclude, not intentionally, players from proceeding in the game. These include vision, motor, auditory, cognitive, speech, and sensory barriers. These being a spectrum; meaning they range from different levels of severity.

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A visual representation and description of different people with disabilities.

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Learn more via my research report⁠

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Removing those unintentional barriers is essential for players with disabilities and useful for all. And it's our responsibility as game makers to remove them as they can prevent someone to play completely or be a usability issue for others.

So, the better we design for everyone, the more successful our games will be. That's why accessibility must be considered as a design pillar like the other ones.

Consider this guideline as a tool to help you start your journey. Feel free to appropriate it by bringing your own design answers (see next tab). And remember, the earlier you embrace it, the easier (and cheaper) it will be to implement. You can start by mirroring your design work on the targeted device(s).

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A photo showing a Figma frame on an external HD display being mirrored to a phone.

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Cheers,

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Matthieu Jeunet Lead Product Design (UX & Lore) Ubisoft Mobile HQ / Editorial

This work is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0⁠

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