2021 was gaming accessibility’s best year – can 2022 outdo it?
I was so thrilled I couldn’t believe it. Before me was an email expressing interest in a pitch I’d sent, which would later be published as my first op-ed for this site: ‘How RPGs like Cyberpunk and Dragon Age change perceptions of accessibility’.
The pitch took a year for me to develop and build the confidence to find it a home, and was the result of frustrations that had simmered over years as a disabled gamer with mobility impairments. Like many other disabled gamers, I was exhausted by the rehashed, simplistic ‘controversy’ around the necessity of accessibility features for disabled gamers versus the ableist assumption that we can ‘git gud’ with practice, or accept our exclusion. I wanted to introduce a new perspective, using RPG mechanics to illustrate how one’s ability to overcome a set of barriers is a matter of relativity, and to ask the industry to move past tired notions of accessibility being a matter of every game having an 'easy' mode.
Only one month after my op-ed was published, a slew of major game releases made parts of my argument old news.
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