Game Accessibility Symbol - Your Thoughts?
Following some previous discussion over a good symbol to represent Game Accessibility, we've settled on three (unless someone twists our arms very hard with a new design). They are...
1. The Accessible Space Invader. Taking the "Universal Symbol of Accessibility" and giving it what many would consider to be the universal symbol of video games, a Taito Space Invader.
2. Wheelchair Pac-Man. Taking the newer "Universal Symbol of Accessibility" (the one where the person wheels themself about), and subverting the person into a Pac-Man like character munching on some dots. Inspired by an original piece by Bashir Sultani and of course Namco's Pac-Man.
3. The Joypad Rider. You can read this symbol in a variety of ways: Combined "Universal Symbol of Accessibility" and a basic joypad; Or laid-back gaming position with giant controller in back-ground; Or person riding some mad-machine in tenous Assistive Technology link; Or Joypad/Huge pair of glasses/Wheelchairuser/Joypad. You get the idea! This symbol was kindly knocked up for us by Chris Thornton of the ever-superb HelpKidzLearn.
Again, we're looking for a symbol to represent a game that we consider to have some good accessibility features. It should also have a link to a review site, where you can learn much more about the game before buying/downloading it.
Before we decide, we'd love to hear your thoughts, either here, over on Facebook or by e-mail: info@specialeffect.org.uk.
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7 Comments
congratulations by the way on the Games tm article Barrie!
The problem with all of these is that they are complex - complex enough that they will be hard to make out at small sizes.
That's the beauty of the standard wheelchair one, it's really easy to make out no matter what situation it is viewed in. I'd just stick with the wheelchair myself. It is already widely recognised, and it's not a good idea to go against an existing understood convention unless there's really no alternative. Like you say, that's already the universal symbol for accessibility.
Example of how these symbols look at different sizes:
http://i51.tinypic.com/21eop52.jpg
Presumably you would want a standard symbol for game accessibility to become widely recognised and used for example in a rating scheme on game packaging, which which case here's an example of how tiny a size it would be likely to be displayed at:
http://www.hkofferhouse.com/images/cover/ps3/Call%20of%20Duty%20Black%20Ops%20-%20U.S%20Ver%20(PS3)%20cover%20back.jpg
Re. the box art issues - I think at that scale, the text is too hard for many to read anyway, hence the importance of computer/console sourced accessible documentation. Also, boxes will become less and less of an issue in the future, with the slow move away from boxed games.
I like your colour-blind filters. Are you using them with Photoshop, or is it something else?
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