Game Accessibility Evaluation Methods: A Literature Survey

Identifying a set of methods to be applied specifically for game accessibility evaluation is a relevant issue to boost and enable further research in the field. To fulfill this objective, we defined five research questions and conducted a literature survey based on snowballing technique. To gather the studies in our survey, we defined a start set of works to serve as ground for the review and performed searches using references and citations of these studies. We found a set of accessibility evaluation methods focused on game accessibility and how they can be classified according to ISO standards. We also found that methods focused on mobile game context still need to be better explored because only a few evidences were retrieved regarding such a domain. Besides traditional accessibility aspects as barriers and users’ satisfaction, results show that distinct game aspects are considered during game accessibility evaluations. In addition, the most part of works refers to evaluation of exergames or games related to users’ mobility. Studies also refer to evaluations regarding more than one category of impairment, especially motor and visual impairments. Future researches in the field should focus on inspection-based methods, because traditional user-based methods have been largely referred as applicable to game accessibility context.