As Stevie Wonder last night handed The Beatles: Rock Band Spike TV’s VGA award for music game of the year, he spoke briefly but passionately on his desire for better “disabled accessibility” in games. While praising the rhythm genre for opening both music and gaming to increasingly younger generations, he made a small plea in aside to developers over the lack of games suited to play by the visually impaired.

Current generation Rock Band and Guitar Hero (as well as Singstar and Lips) titles may appease those like Wonder by offering the chance to sing songs that they already know, but the absence of feedback interpretable by the unsighted reduces the all important gaming element. Indeed the media’s framing itself, “videogaming”, poses immediate problems in its inherent inclusion of sight in its inseparably visual prefix.

Website AbleGamers recently launched reviews detailing titles not on content, but accessibility. However, the site at present does not denote score for titles’ suitability for the blind, presumably struggling similarly with underlying difficulty in the setup and conventional delivery of games themselves. Currently, mainstream titles cannot appease the blind satisfactorily: a fact not so much discriminatory as financially necessary and media (as in form, not press) dictated.

Indie titles like In The Pit are far more likely to make attempt to offer both new experiences to those blind or able sighted. However it is an unfortunate truth that the niche appeal of such a title denies its commercial success or common mainstream acceptance. The industry suggests that innovation in control like Natal may eventually open up gaming to a wider audience, but it seems highly unlikely that at current, a difficulty in overcoming conventional pad interface has created Wonder’s barrier to gaming entry.

Do developers have a duty to cater for all in each and every release? No. Do developers owe an attention to those currently un-netted and stereotypically un-nettable by gamings increasingly wide ranging draw? Perhaps. For now, Stevie Wonder will just have to stick to Guitar Hero 5′s Superstition on repeat.

Via: The Lost Gamer