Inclusive Design
When you are working as a part of the creative media industry, inclusive design is something that should always be considered for all projects. Inclusive design is something that many individual might not immediately think of when they are planning to create something, since it is something that might not affect the end product in the creator's mind.
Even if you aren't familiar with inclusive design, you will probably still be familiar with the concept. It is designing a product to be as accessible as possible to all people. This could be a design which compensates for a specific disability, or it could be done by designing it so that it is inoffensive to and inclusive of a wide range of demographics. No matter who somebody is, inclusive design aims to ensure that they can still enjoy the product as much as (or as close as possible to) somebody else.
It can be tricky to utilize inclusive design in a game development environment, since games need to be interacted with, and somebody who suffers from something such as paralysis would be incapable of interacting with the game. Although it is tricky, there are things that should always be considered, since they make up a part of your potential consumers and it is possible to be inclusive towards them.
If your game only caters to a specific demographic, you will have less of a target audience. About half of the population at any time will be either given gender. If a game is inclusive to only a single gender, you have effectively cut your target audience in half, and might offend the other half. The same goes with things such as religion, sexuality, and race, however with these, you could potentially cut away more than half of your target audience if you aren't inclusive. There are two main ways that a game can be more inclusive to demographics such as these.
The first way is to not include any choice of the demographic at all. For example, you could use gender neutral characters or not even reference (or counter) religious beliefs in your game. If it is not there at all for anybody, it will not be inclusive to any individual or demographic over another.
Often a game will need to include characters with genders, races, or sexual orientations. You might think that this could be made more inclusive by ensuring that there is at least one character to represent every demographic. This is a common misconception. If a demographic is only referenced through a single character in the game, it is likely that the intentions will be seen that the character was meant to represent that entire demographic, and some might not like that representation.
Instead, multiple characters in each demographic should be made and they should all be different, much like how every person is unique. On top of that, it might be wise to consider getting people from those demographics to ensure that it is an accurate representation of their demographic, or even getting them to help with the design. They will often pick up on intricacies in their demographic that those outside would easily miss. A game should be inclusive to as many demographics as possible if it is especially inclusive to at least one.
Although it may be hard to make video games accessible to people with disabilities, there are some things that can easily be done to ensure that some may still play. Allowing a player to bind their own controls is a good example, since then they can set the controls to whatever they are capable of using. For example, if somebody lost a hand, they could change the bindings so that all actions could be performed with their other hand.
About 8% of males and 0.5% of females are colour blind. It is important to make games accessible to the colour blind, especially since it is normally a fairly easy fix if considered before development. One of the most common forms of colour blindness is red/green, and less common is blue/yellow, causing individuals to have difficulty distinguishing between these colours. To make it accessible, simply ensure that these colours are not together and don't need to be differentiated between. If they must be, then add stimulus other than colour, such as a pattern or shape so that they can still make the distinction.
Inclusive design is incredibly important and should always be greatly considered in the design of all creative media.
Bibliography
Bigman, A. (2013, April 17). Why all designers need to understand color blindness [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://99designs.com.au/blog/tips/designers-need-to-understand-color-blindness/
Copyright free images retrieved from Pixabay