Entertainment Software Accessibility: Introduction to the Special Thematic Session

摘要

The kids of the first generation who grew up with computer games are now in their forties, and younger people have been surrounded by more and more devices allowing to use such games. The descendants of our old game stations which were displaying 2 bars on a black and white TV set to play tennis, are now very close to very powerful computers. Games appeared also on websites and mobile phones, while portable game stations allow some amazing visual features. The budgets of some of the major games have reached the level of motion pictures, and a huge number of small games are developed every year. Computer games are now in the heart of the youngsters culture. At the same time one could observe also that a growing part of the population of other age groups are using computer games. Indeed a lot of software application implementing the games the people of these older groups want to play have been designed and became more and more simple to use, while the people of these groups have been familiarised to computer at their work. Therefore it's not rare to see retired people playing scrabble online or card games. More than games themselves, game like interfaces are designed on an increasing part of standard applications. We mean here interfaces that does not follow the ordinary scheme: window with a title bar, a menu and a client area under them. Web applications especially have interaction areas spread all over the browser's client area, menus are more and more contextual, etc. Another increasing area is the area of serious games, that can be essential for training or for certain kind of professional activities. In that way computer games are really part of nowadays cultures in most developed countries, and the tendency still is on a growing dynamic. An important part of people with disabilities are de facto excluded from this culture because they simply cannot interact with the interfaces. In order to overcome this inequality, a research community is also growing. It is the sixth time that a session about entertainment software accessibility is presented in the ICCHP conference, and we never had so many paper submitted, and as a consequence so many papers finally in the session.