The Roblox Corporation has a “best practices” documentation available focusing on accessibility for creators who may be creating a game in Roblox Studio. And while it looks designed to help creators keep accessibility in mind when using Roblox Studio, it contains information that can be carried to other projects elsewhere.
Roblox is a creative game that, in 2020 saw 32.6 million daily active users and allows players to join different types of games that have been created by 8 million developers that are using Roblox Studio. The accessibility best practices page keeps things simple, referencing real world accessibility accommodations before moving into how video games can be made accessible.
Text is one of the points explained, encouraging creators to increase the size of small text to allow for better readability. There are also some interactive buttons that shows an example of how someone with low vision would likely see the text displayed.
And there’s also examples of colours, encouraging high-contrast colours. But also not to rely entirely on colours and instead use symbols for colourblind players.
And then finally the post talks about making use of visual cues for sounds for those that may be Deaf or hard of hearing, or even those who just like to play without sound. This part is exampled with a video showing what the difference can do
The addition of this information is certainly fantastic to see, especially as many users are creating games in Roblox Studio and having them keep accessibility in mind from a young age could be great for ensuring future projects have that same thought process applied.
Additionally, it’s great to see accessibility being highlighted in documentation, showing that more studios are becoming aware of the importance of accessibility in video games and hopefully will use the knowledge in conjunction with reference guides such as our guides that are available here.
Roblox is available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, iOS, and Android.
