• RSS
This is a living document. Feel free to get in touch with any feedback, thoughts or questions. close

Game accessibility guidelines

  • Basic
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Full list
  • Why and how

Provide high contrast between text/UI and background

The text and reticule on this is SO low contrast. The UI/menus are littered with pale yellow on white images. I hope this is fixed |:
cherryrae, via Twitter

After text size, contrast is one of the most common UI complaints, There are common vision impairments that specifically result in a loss of contrast sensitivity, and others such as colorblindness that can be affected by contrast too.

Ensuring a good level of contrast also benefits many other gamers who have situational impairments, such as playing on a mobile device, in direct sunlight, or on a poor quality display.

Ideally place your text and UI elements on a plain high contrast background, or where that is not possible, use prominent outlines and shadows to separate them from the background. The web industry has an established testable limit for what constitutes adequate contrast for screens, which can be applied to games – a foreground/background contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. a tool to test for this ratio is linked to below.

Note: There is a common misconception that high contrast text can trigger epileptic seizures. This is not true. Harding test fails can be resolved by maintaining contrast, increasing font size, reducing line spacing, or ensuring regular well spaced paragraph breaks.

Best practice example: For Honor
Best practice example: Happy Wars
Best practice example: Bertram Fiddle

Tool: Snook contrast checker (aim for a “yes” under “WCAG 2 AA Compliant”)

All guidelines

Three cogs, smallest coghighlightedBasic
Three cogs, medium sized cog highlightedIntermediate
Three cogs, largest cog highlightedAdvanced
Three cogs, all  highlightedFull list
ExcelExcel checklist download

Help & advice

How to work with these guidelines

FCC Chairman's Award for Advancement in Accessibility
finalist 2016, tiga games industry awards
DFA foundation best practice award, Horizon Interactive Bronze Winner, 7-128 industry & community leader

About the guidelines

A collaborative effort between a group of studios, specialists and academics, to produce a straightforward developer friendly reference for ways to avoid unnecessarily excluding players, and ensure that games are just as fun for as wide a range of people as possible.

SEARCH

Contact

Send us email
© Copyright - Game accessibility guidelines - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at