Older Gamers, More Accessible Game Features?

simoniker writes "Microsoft's Brannon Zahand has been addressing the key issues of accessibility, from all aspects of game development, noting: 'The demand for accessibility will continue to grow as the gaming population ages. As people grow older, mild impairments can become more severe. Also, people are likely to develop new difficulties and impairments as they age. Adding basic accessibility features to titles can help publishers and developers continue to draw revenue from these customers.' Will we have to change how games play as gamers get older?"

Re:Well, this is very true

[Jerf]

Whatever the reason as I get older I am now totally depended on Opera's excellent zoom function.

The Mozilla browsers have the ability to set a "Minimum Font Size", which I use. I wouldn't be surprised that Opera has something similar.

I have young-ish eyes (not perfect but near vision is not where I have my problems), but just because I can read rather small fonts doesn't mean I want to.

It does tend to mess some sites up, but usually it's no loss. (For example, the much-linked-by-Slashdat "Escapist" gaming magazine is completely unreadable, but "obviously unreadable due to typographic reasons" is still an improvement over "subtly unreadable due to excessive pretension".)

I am a gamer with physical disabliites.

[antdude]

I enjoyed this article because it relates to me. There's a reason why I don't own a gaming console. I haven't owned one since Atari 2600. Due to my four fingers on my hands, lack of thumbs, and inablility to hold game controllers in mid air, I cannot use those console controllers very well. I have to use them on tables to hold them. This is why I do better on computer games because of keyboards, mice (small light ones like those old two/three button ones), and simple small joysticks (think of those old one/two buttons one like those old school Atari 2600 joysticks [google.com]). I currently have a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick [amazon.com], but they have too many buttons and too big for my hands, so I don't do well when flying (I avoid flying in Battlefield [ea.com] games ;)). :(

I also have speech and hearing impediments, so I don't use Teamspeak [goteamspeak.com] or any voice communications. I tried it once in Day of Defeat [dayofdefeatmod.com] (original version) and obviously, no one knew I was saying (even my friends whom I talked to!). Hearing is another problem since I don't hear well with my analog bone conduction hearing aid (mono -- one microphone and can't determine audio directions). I love games that use closed caption/CC and suititles like in Half-Life 2 [halflife.com] games (only use the dialog ones) and F.E.A.R. [whatisfear.com].