[tyleo]

I love co-pilot. Throughout the pandemic my fiancé and I used the feature to play different sections of single player games as though they were multiplayer. I don’t think either one of us would consider ourselves to have a disability.

I used to work on games at Microsoft and they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to accessibility. I had spent multiple days in the accessibility lab interviewing and understanding how to make games easier for people with various disabilities. One of my managers encouraged me to test my features using the controller with one hand and farther away from the screen where bad font decisions were more obvious.

Two things I remember in particular from that time at Microsoft:

* The claim that making games better for people with disabilities makes them better for everyone

* The claim that most people will have a disability (not necessarily permanent) at some point in their life

I feel that those two lessons have permanently impacted my design lens.

[cldellow]

> The claim that most people will have a disability (not necessarily permanent) at some point in their life

I think it was Microsoft that came up with a great infographic illustrating that disabilities aren't a black/white thing. It broke things down by permanent vs temporary vs situational.

Something like:

- Touch / tactile - arm/hand amputation (permanent), arm in a sling (temporary), new parent cradling a baby (situational)

- Vision - blindness (permanent), cataracts (temporary), distracted driver (situational)

- Hearing - deafness (permanent), ear infection (temporary), bartender in a noisy bar (situational)

- Speaking - non-verbal (permanent), laryngitis (temporary), interacting with a heavy accent (situational)

When framed like this, it seems much easier to make the case for accessible products, versus as an afterthought.

[evilpie]

I really liked that infographic when I first saw it on twitter a while ago. I found it again at https://accessibility.asu.edu/wa-helps-everyone-large-versio..., which specifies Microsoft's Inclusive Toolkit Manual as the source.

[JJMcJ]

Also with touch: Arthritis, Carpal Tunnel and other RSI, tremors, using touch screen in bed or other awkward situations

Vision: Color blindness

And the list goes on.

[thesmok]

> most people will have a disability (not necessarily permanent) at some point in their life

I've got an eye infection when I was a teenager. It has strongly tinted my vision white, so for a couple of days I could only see outlines of big objects highlighted by skylight. From this experience I found I could still walk my usual routes without wandering off the road, as I could recognize familiar telephone poles, trees, I even remembered all the ruts in the road.

[ByThyGrace]

Well then, will you not share what kind of game you've worked on? That's too good of a post to leave us hanging, hehe.