Accessible Games

Having a Learning Disability and Teaching Games

Learning Disabled and Teaching Tabletop Games is a great article written by James Cole and featured on The Geeky Gimp. IN the article, James talks about his gift of being a great board game teacher and how his experience with having a learning disability has shaped that skill.

I particularly like how James talks about different types of learners, including visual, aural, and kinesthetic learners. Like James, I have taken a few courses on adult learning theory and picked up a lot of useful information about how to work with people who have various learning styles and needs.

James also adds some great points about knowing your audience, teaching to their level, and picking the right game for the right group.

Whether or not you have a disability, there’s a lot of great information in this article about how to teach tabletop games to new players. I recommend you take a …
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Interviewed by Plus or Minus Podcast

Recently I was honored to be interviewed by Troy Truchon of the Plus or  Minus Podcast, the world’s first Fudge RPG-specific podcast. We talked about accessibility in the tabletop games industry, Psi-punk, Monster Kart Mayhem, and Fudge in general.

You can listen to the podcast via the embeded player below, but I would encourage you to visit Plus or Minus and check out their back catalog as well. This podcast receives the distinction of being the one and only podcast I have ever followed for more than five episodes in a stretch.

Visit the Plus or Minus website.

Listen to the interview

Dragon Plus Article Obscures D&D Accessibility Issues

It has been almost seven months since I last wrote for the blog. A lot has happened since then, including a cross-country move from Oregon to Kentucky. That doesn’t mean my website, my design, or my ideas are dead–they’ve just been dormant for a while. Now it’s time to start getting things rolling again.

Recently I started talks with a local group about starting up a family-friendly Dungeons and Dragons group. I haven’t played much D&D in a long time, and that is in small part due to its inaccessibility. When the D&D 5e Basic Set came out in PDF several years ago, I ran into considerable barriers trying to access and read it. Couple that with the fact that Wizards of the Coast doesn’t release their core 5e products in PDF, and that led me to be completely disinterested in the game. After all, why should I jump through hoops …
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Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Today (May 17th, 2018) is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. I thought it would be a great time to reflect on how far we’ve come as an industry and how far we still have to go.

When I started the Accessible Games blog back in 2010, my primary goal was to review board games and talk about their accessibility (or lack thereof). The idea was to spotlight those games which are easily adapted for people with disabilities (PWDs) and to mention which games should probably be avoided for people with certain disabilities.

As the years progressed, I started to grow frustrated with common accessibility issues. I gravitated more toward roleplaying games because they simply required less effort to adapt for my personal needs. They also offered me lots of hours of enjoyment without the need to adapt every new game that came my way. A few modifications to an RPG of choice was …
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Modifier Podcast Episodes about Accessibility

I recently came upon the Modifier Podcast, part of the One Shot Podcast Network. To date, the podcast has featured two episodes about accessibility in gaming which everyone should check out.

Episode 1 is an interview with Elsa S. Henry, designer of Dead Scare and the upcoming Fate Accessibility Toolkit. If that name sounds familiar to you, it may be because you saw the Diversity+ panel I shared with her and others (or you may know her from any number of other reasons).

Episode 19 is an interview with two other podcasters, one of whom is blind. They talk a great deal about games, game aids, conventions, and various other accessibility topics.

So far I’m fond of everything I’ve listened to on this podcast and will definitely be following it in the future. Hats off to Meghan Dornbrock for a fantastic show.

What Does Accessibility Mean to You?

This month I’ll be hosting the RPG  Blog Carnival, a blogging tradition going back to 2008. This month’s topic? Accessibility in Games, of course.

Throughout the month of March, I’d encourage you to really think about what accessibility in gaming means to you. It may mean different things to different people: equal access for people with disabilities, inclusiveness in game design and representation of people from diverse backgrounds, family-friendly gaming with a welcoming vibe, etc.

The Accessible Games motto is “Games for absolutely everyone.” To me, that pretty much means all of the above.

If you’re familiar with this blog, you’ll know that I often talk about how to make RPGs more accessible to people who use screen …
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International Day of Persons with Disabilities – Sale

Thursday, December 3rd, is the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities. To celebrate, and to bring awareness to gamers with disabilities, we’re selling all of our PDFs for 50% off from DriveThruRPG.

The theme for this year is Inclusion matters: access and empowerment for people of all abilities.

“The right to participate in public life is essential to create stable democracies, active citizenship and reduce inequalities in society.”
Source: UN.org

It’s every individual’s responsibility to be inclusive of people from all walks of life. As gamers, we’ve been exposed to a lot of discussion about the rights of women and people of color–and to be sure, discussion of those rights is absolutely imperative–but we don’t often talk …
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Style Guide for Writing About People with Disabilities

I recently came upon this helpful style guide for writing about people with disabilities. It’s geared toward members of the press, but useful for anyone who might be writing about disabilities in general.

Link: NCDJ Style Guide

The style guide has a helpful A to Z list of common terms, their backgrounds, and recommendations for how to use them when referring to people with disabilities. There are a couple of common themes among their recommendations:

• Use people-first language. This means you should use phrases such as “a person with a visual impairment” rather than “a visually impaired person.”
• Only refer to the disability if it’s relevant to the story. One example they use is that of residents of a neighborhood complaining about noisy airplanes flying overhead. One of the residents uses a wheelchair, but that fact isn’t relevant to the story because it has nothing to do with the noisiness of the …
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  Tags: publisher advice, accessibility

Conventions and Canes

Summer convention season is once again upon us, and that means it’s time for a friendly reminder about being aware of yourself and your surroundings while you’re interacting with others in large crowds.

Recently I had the honor of writing a guest post for hans Cummings’ “GenCon Tips and Advice Series” on his blog. The article, entitled Conventions and Canes, talks a bit about my excitement and apprehension about attending GenCon for the first time and being there without a sighted guide. It also goes on to provide some tips and advice for con-goers about how to maintain awareness and be supportive of fellow attendees who may have need for some accommodations.

You can read that article on Hans’ website here.

If you’re new to the Accessible Games blog, you may also want to check out these past articles I wrote about similar topics:

• Dungeons and Dragons and Disabilities (January 2011)
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Uploading Unwatermarked PDFs to DTRPG

Introduction

After the spotlight on Shaintar I wrote a few weeks ago, I received quite a bit of feedback from people who had some misconceptions about DriveThruRPG’s system limitations. I’d like to clear up a few of them with today’s tutorial and walk you through the process of uploading a file to DTRPG without watermarks.

Much of the feedback I received was from other layout artists who, I presume, don’t often upload the final PDFs to DriveThru. Some of the feedback was from other publishers who, again I presume, don’t’ do layout work themselves.

I seem to be in a somewhat uncommon position where I do both. I realized that I have insight drawn from both sides of this issue; from the perspective of the publisher uploading the files and the layout person who puts them together. Whether you do one, the other, or both, I hope you can learn from …
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