The second annual Video Game Accessibility Awards are set for this year and AbleGamers, the Video Game Accessibility Awards showcase accessibility in video games. The pair highlights and awards video games that allow players to modify the controls of the game to fit their particular needs.
The AbleGamers Foundation is a nonprofit organization that began in 2004. The group's mission is to work with video game developers to make games accessible for everyone and work to create a community within the gaming industry so that everyone can game. Steven Spohn is the COO of the organization and has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the lack of accessibility present within video games. The foundation has gotten a lot of traction in recent years and AbleGamers even received a shoutout from Brie Larson on Twitter last year.
Adaptive Controller Microsoft created.
The for the Video Game Accessibility Awards is made up entirely of disabled gamers. They nominated and voted on the video games that best fit the accessibility guidelines that AbleGamers created as a tool for developers to use when creating games. Other games that were included on the nominee list were Back 4 Blood, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, to name a few. The other categories on the list are Second Channel, which is a second interface option for players to get the information they may need to move forward in the story, Input Reduction, which allows players to decrease the amount of input needed to get through a section of the game (i.e. quick time events), and Ability to By, which will let players skip entire sections of a game that they might not be able to successfully complete.
The Video Game Accessibility Awards is an important event that highlights and celebrates developers that are working towards the common goal of allowing everyone to enjoy gaming. Developers, like Inner Sloth, creators of Among Us, and Spohn have had discussions about disability and are moving in the right direction when it comes to creating accessible and adaptable gameplay for everyone to enjoy. The Video Game Accessibility Awards will be live-streamed on March 12, 2022, and are hosted by Alanah Pearce and Steven Spohn.
Source: IGN
