Q.


With the industry riven by redundancies and cost-cutting, do you fear that accessibility efforts will be set back in the months and years ahead? Have you seen or heard any evidence of this?


The loss of Tango Gameworks so soon after Hi-Fi Rush feels like a blow for accessibility efforts


“It’s often overlooked how inexpensive accessibility can be to implement if you start early


enough” SightlessKombat


Ian Hamilton: Yes, that absolutely has been happening, most notably in terms of headcount. While there have been some accessibility hires in the past year there have  and even people forced to leave the industry altogether. This is an issue across the whole industry and across tech in general and other industries too. At time of writing there have been three full time accessibility positions lost in the past week alone, which may not seem like huge numbers but that’s actually nearly 5% of the global workforce gone in the space of a week, so the impact is really keenly felt. It’s also not just about the headcount, budget for internal initiatives is also being squeezed, and for external spend too. At time of writing


the future of GAconf is currently at risk for this very reason, meaning sponsorship money is drying up. And it isn’t over either, 2024 is clearly going to be worse rather than better.


Stacey Jenkins: It’s an uncertain time for  something that’s on people’s minds. Cutting features can happen at any time though, and  reason why it’s valuable to start early, and build accessibility into our games by design, from the ground up. For example, we can make our designs colourblind accessible by never relying on colour to communicate - using icons,  way, we might not even need a colourblind


April/May 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 23


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52