It’s been officially announced that this years Game Accessibility Conference will be taking place later this year in September and it’ll be entirely digital.
This year, #GAConf will be a bit different, most likely due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Rather than being held in a space with hosts being situated in front of an audience, it’ll now be free to attend and hosted through video conferencing and Discord. The Game Accessibility Conference used to be held solely in the US, but from 2018 it had been held twice a year, in the US and Europe.
The conference is hosted by IGDA-GASIG. It’ll find hosts talking about making video games more accessible to gamers with disabilities. Those attending can expect to hear talks, discover networking opportunities, and learning of the recent advances in video game accessibility as well as what lies ahead for the future.
The conference touches on both AAA games and indie games as well as having academia and accessibility specialists discussing topics and sharing experiences. Some of these topics are detailed to be deep dives on individual features, case studies on landmark games, user research techniques, the personal experiences of blind gamers, and even what strategies can be built by in-house teams.
As an example, a segment from GAConf2019 saw Jon Knoles, the design director from Turn 10 Studios talk about making the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon titles accessible to players. You can see the archived video below.
Some of the speakers taking part in this year’s Game Accessibility Conference are developers from games such as Sequence Storm and Hyperdot. People from AAA studios such as Xbox and Ubisoft. And disabled gamers, advocates, and specialists. Those confirmed are Clint “halfcoordinated” Lexa, Michael Feir, and Randy “N0M4D” Fitzgerald.
If you’re interested in learning more about IGDA you can visit the official website. The event will be officially taking place on September 28th and the 29th. The Game Accessibility Conference website is also live, but no further details are shown.
