Comments on: Accessible Kids’ Computer Games: Serious Fun http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=626 Access to technology for all Sun, 01 Apr 2018 16:32:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.1 By: Ian Hamilton http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=626&cpage=1#comment-6254 Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:08:17 +0000 http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=626#comment-6254 Lower levels of provision are (unfortunately) to be expected as blind children is one of the smallest disabled demographics, due to blindness (and to a lesser extent visual impairment) being age related, occurring through disease, injury or deterioration. There are, for example, only 50 children born bind in the UK every year. On top of that it is far more complex to develop blind friendly games than any other group, even motor.. And even more difficult when you take into account that children do not use screen readers.

What that means is of course that it’s a tiny group, woefully underprovided for, but because of that huge value for any content that does happen to be made.

Unlike other types of disability and unlike blind web provision it’s not something that can be done by following best practice, really what’s needed is enough awareness for developers to be able to spot when a mechanic is particularly suited to blind play. To my mind at least, due to the very small audience numbers involved, piggybacking onto other ideas that are suitable for adaptation gives a much better chance of getting results than hoping for things to be made bespoke. It’s that awareness that’s the trick though.

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