A Qualitative Investigation of Real World Accessible Design Experiences within a Large Scale Commercial Game Development Studio

Video games are an important area of entertainment in popular culture and therefore it is a matter of social inclusion that they are designed to be accessible for people with disabilities. While there is a large body of research and guidelines that identify design solutions to accessibility issues, we still see many mainstream games missing important accessibility features; just a relatively small portion of the literature considers the experiences of game developers. By interviewing game developers at a single large-scale studio, the present research illuminates the accessibility challenges faced by developers within a realistic organisational context. Using a reflexive thematic analysis approach, we identify various key areas where accessibility challenges might arise at an organisational level, as well as how developers feel these challenges might be resolved. This research has significant implications for game developers looking to implement processes to facilitate accessible game development, and we provide recommendations relating to areas including responsibility, prioritization, feedback and goal clarity.