These are now currently under production!
Our goal with the Tabletop Accessibility Guidelines (TTAG) is to provide guidance for publishers and designers to make their games more broadly accessible to gamers currently facing barriers to play. We do not expect every guideline to be appropriate for every game, nor every game be accessible to every person. What we do believe is that we can significantly increase the baseline level of game accessibility as it comes out of the box.
We’re not going to aim for a set of guidelines that everyone can follow – every game is individual and the intention and design of the game is vital here. Some games simply won’t be accessible in particular categories, or to particular intersections of impairment. What we are looking to do is provide suggestions for ways to meaningfully improve accessibility and permit designers and publishers to pick which are appropriate or feasible for their games.
- Phase One – Recruitment (completed)
- Phase Two – The first compilation of guidelines.
- Phase Three – The Cull.
- Phase Four – Prioritization.
- Phase Five – Sign Off.
- Phase Six – Draft Publication.
- Phase Seven – Revision in line with public feedback.
- Phase Eight – Final publication.
- Phase Nine – Advertisement and Advocacy
If you think you’d have a perspective on the construction of accessibility guidelines for tabletop games, please get in touch with me at michael@meeplelikeus.co.uk. I am especially interested in contributors in the following broad categories, in no particular order:
- People with disabilities (of course)
- Publishers or Distributors
- Board game manufacturers
- Artists and graphic designers
- Designers, published or otherwise
- Marginalized voices
We’re currently in the process of hashing out version 1.0 of the TTAG on a wiki. If you think you’d like to be involved, please get in touch.