Writing for Inclusive Game Design

When designing game instructions for accessibility, both visual design and rule writing can play a big role.

In technical writing, we want to make instructions accessible to as many people as possible. Game manuals are often a highly visual genre of technical writing, which poses challenges for blind or low vision (BLV) players. Understanding what makes games more accessible to BLV players can help game designers and publishers to write more inclusive game rules.

THE RESEARCH 

In their article “Understanding Tabletop Games Accessibility: Exploring Board and Card Gaming Experiences of People who are Blind and Low Vision,” Adrian Bolesnikov, Jin Kang, and Audrey Girouard (2022) from Carleton University interviewed 15 BLV individuals about accessibility in tabletop gaming. They used reflexive thematic analysis to find themes across the interview transcripts and looked for relationships between the themes. The four themes they found were the properties and the outcomes of inaccessible games and the properties and the outcomes of accessible games.

The researchers found that accessible rulebooks are an important property of accessible games, and physical rulebooks become more accessible when a Braille version is available. Further, digital rulebooks are most accessible when they are available in screen reader–friendly HTML. The researchers concluded that “accessible rulebooks should present information in multiple forms” (Bolesnikov, Kang, and Girouard 2022). Participants said that regardless of medium, rulebooks written in clear, simple language were more accessible than rulebooks with large chunks of text and complex sentences. Similarly, players with low vision benefited from features like large text and high-contrast colors on game pieces. Participants also said that games themselves are more accessible when the rules are designed with BLV players in mind. 

THE IMPLICATIONS

To make games accessible, publishers should consider how to make different versions available for players with different needs. Braille versions can make the game more accessible to some participants, but some BLV players do not read Braille. Digital versions of the game can be made screen reader or Optical Character Recognition (OCR) accessible. Making descriptive audio and instructional videos available can also help BLV players. Presenting information in multiple forms makes it accessible to a wider range of players.

When writing game manuals, writers can keep in mind the clarity and simplicity of the rule text, regardless of the end publication format. This impacts all players, but BLV players already have a higher cognitive load, or stress on working memory, than sighted players; thus, complex or unclear rules prove a bigger barrier to gameplay. To further reduce this cognitive load, writers can ensure that rules are written concisely as well.

Designers can use a combination of high contrast colors and large text to make game pieces easier for low vision players to use. Pairing colors with symbols also makes games accessible for players with color blindness.  Making inclusive design choices helps make games accessible to disabled players, particularly BLV players.

To learn more about designing games to be accessible to BLV players, read the full article:

Bolesnikov, Adrian, Jin Kang, and Audrey Girouard. 2022. “Understanding Tabletop Games Accessibility: Exploring Board and Card Gaming Experiences of People who are Blind and Low Vision.” In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’22), pp. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3501327

—Eldin Ratliff, Editing Research

FEATURE IMAGE BY ANDIBANANE

Find more research

Read Rachel Frei’s Editing Research article to learn about writing for screenreader accessibility: “Editing Sentence Length For Screen Reader User Accessibility.”

Take a look at Darijo Čerepinko, Robert Štefanović, Krunoslav Hajdek, and Petar Miljković’s (2025) article for more discussion of digital game design:  “Less Is More in Digital Games Too: A Comparative Analysis of Visual Elements of Physical and Digital Versions for Two Tabletop Games.” Applied Sciences, 15, no. 2: 715. https://doi.org/10.3390/app15020715. 

Check out João Léste and Jackeline Farbiarz’s (2023) article to learn about current barriers to accessibility for blind and low vision game players: “Current Accessibility Challenges and Perspectives for People with Visual Impairments in Tabletop Games.” International Journal of Games and Social Impact, 1, no. 2. https://doi.org/10.24140/ijgsi.v1.n2.04.