Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Caitlin Jones, a Program Manager on the Gaming Accessibility team at Xbox, and today I'm going to be talking about the Gaming Accessibility Fundamentals course on Microsoft Learn. So, I'll give a bit of an overview of what's in the course for those who are unfamiliar, as well as talk about the development process, what kind of went into its creation, and some of the learnings and insights that we gathered along the way, in case anyone else out there would love to contribute similar trainings on gaming accessibility in the future. So what is the Gaming Accessibility Fundamentals course? It was launched in December of 2021, so we're about one year post-launch at this point, coming up on that date, and it's about four hours worth of free content on the Microsoft Learn platform that covers the basics of what game accessibility is, what it's about, and some of those core principles that we as an industry ground a lot of our practice and guidance in when it comes to creating more accessible gaming experiences. So this course is really for people who are new or very beginner level to gaming accessibility, just getting their feet wet, and they're looking for a really base level overview of, again, what it's all about. We also wanted to give folks an opportunity to share the new knowledge that they've obtained. So after passing all of the knowledge checks in the course, you get a badge with the lovely Joyrider logo on it that you can share out to your social medias, and really kind of have a way to show that you put in the time and effort to learn more about game accessibility and have a tangible way of proving out that knowledge. So the way that the course is broken down, which is very intentional, is there's one main learning path, and throughout that learning path there are a total of five modules, and I'll discuss these in a bit more detail a little bit later. There's no requirement for anyone to go through all five modules, they can just choose one or two, they don't have to be taken in any specific order, and I think as long as you're signed into a free account when you start any of the modules, your progress should actually be saved when you come back to it if you can't finish an entire module in one sitting. And now I'll do a very brief overview of each of the five modules and what's in them, starting with module one, which is called our Introduction to Gaming and Disability, and I love this module and how it was structured because from the very start we wanted to set the stage for what gaming accessibility is by encouraging developers or people taking the course to think of game accessibility not as something synonymous with a group of settings or features, but rather to think about accessibility as more of a way to approach designing games and gaming products. And we did that first by introducing the concept of thinking about how games are actually played. So again, very base level, but breaking down the activity of gaming into the required actions or demands that are placed upon players by the game and what those players need to do in order to be successful. So first starting with how games provide us with visual and audio output to help us inform our decisions. So whether you just started the game and there's text on the screen that you need to read to navigate to the menu or choose what settings you want for your game before you start, whether that's during gameplay, there's a visual waypoint marker on screen that is supposed to guide you to where to go so you're not wandering around, or maybe from an audio perspective you're given a really nice helpful audio cue that some dangerous enemies are nearby and approaching even if they're not on the screen yet. These are the outputs that are given to us that we then consume and then from there cognitively players have to interpret this information and make an informed decision on what to do with it. Do I go toward the direction of the sound of enemies? Do I have enough health to engage in battle right now? Can I see my health indicator? Is it high enough contrast? Is it right allowed to me to even gain all the information that I need? And then once those decisions are made, breaking down the different physical actions that are needed from an input perspective to carry out what you intended to do. And by explaining the processes in this way, it hopefully sets the stage for how we talk about mismatches or barriers that can come as a result of early design decisions in games. So for example, when a developer chooses to design that waypoint marker as a really really small and a dark color against a pretty dimly lit game environment and they don't provide an option to let players change the color or size, the game is basically setting the demand that players with x level of visual acuity that can see that small low contrast object on the screen. That is the level or demand of visual acuity needed to leverage the information that this waypoint marker is giving players. And if a player does not have that level of visual acuity, they are basically being excluded from using that information to inform their gameplay. Similarly, if the demand of the game is that a player needs to repeatedly mash a pattern of buttons in the right order as the only move that defeats the boss that's blocking progress to the next level and a player cannot meet those physical demands of those quick presses, they can be blocked from progressing through the game based on those barriers that are set forth throughout the design of the game. And of course these are just a few of many many examples, but we're really excited to be able to introduce a thought process and approach in this way from the very beginning as we set the stage for our fundamentals course. And then in module two, we discuss the importance of nothing about us without us and how it's so imperative that actual players from the gaming and disability community are integrated as part of the development process, calling out some ideas for getting in touch with these community members and connecting with them, especially for smaller studios or those without a lot of user research budget and things like that, as well as just some general best practices and things to be aware of, like the fact that, you know, your campus and the rooms that you are bringing people to to do play tests need to be accessible, that coming onto a huge tech campus can be really scary and overwhelming, and how can you make that process easier for some of these participants. So it's all about working and collaborating with the community. And then as we get into module three, that's when we cover both software and hardware-based assistive technologies that players might be using and why it's important to make sure that your game is compatible in supporting these technologies. But also, especially from the hardware perspective, calling out that not everyone is using the same types of input devices, and that can also affect someone's gameplay. So, you know, one example we talk about after introducing the Xbox Adaptive Controller and switch buttons and things like that is we discuss how certain types of inputs and challenging mechanics in games can be problematic. So a lot of times if an input demand in a game is optimized for, you know, the amount of time it takes someone's thumb to travel an inch or less across their controller to mash nearby buttons, we also have to keep in mind that not all players are actually using their thumbs, or their hands for that matter. And, you know, the amount of time it takes to use your head or your foot to activate a switch button may be quite a few seconds longer, and really bring awareness to the variety of ways people play games that are outside of the box of the whole, you know, two-hand standard controller mindset. And then as we get into module four, it's basically the Xbox accessibility guidelines, but sort of boiled down into high-level concepts like general building customizable experiences, representing information through multiple sensory channels, make sure you're supporting multiple methods of completing tasks, and then of course it links out to the guidelines themselves for more specifics if anyone wants to check those out once they're done with the course. And then finally, we have module five, which is where we actually talk about hardware accessibility. So, it's one of my favorites for sure. It was really fun working on, and shout out to our hardware and packaging teams that we partnered really heavily on in creating this module with. And again, very high level, but we call out some basic concepts like using standard hardware connections, button sizes, button heights, activation force, and then also some packaging best practices. So, make sure you're including those leverage points and pull tabs and negative space cavities and things like that, which are commonly overlooked when it comes to the whole product development process, but then you have the end of the packaging design. And it's really unfortunate because who doesn't want to unbox their own cool new gaming device that just came in the mail or just came from the store? And that's such a big part of the experience. And when we design packaging in a way that is impossible to open, it really does set the intention of the accessibility of the product before the user might even be laying their eyes on it. So, calling out that packaging and the hardware itself is also part of the broader net that is gaming accessibility. So, that was a quick overview of what the course covers. And of course, feel free to send us any feedback if you have taken it. It was very much a major learning process putting this together. So, we're incredibly open to how we can make it better going forward. But now I'll touch on some of the learnings and insights that were gathered along the way. So, as I mentioned earlier, this is hosted on the Microsoft Learn platform. And we chose this platform one because it's free and external. As a Microsoft company, we have access to post to it. But also, we wanted to make sure that as many people as possible could leverage and take this course if they wanted to without encountering financial barriers. But also, too, the platform itself is accessible, which of course was equally as important to us. And with this kind of platform and how the trainings are laid out, there were some pretty distinct roles and lifting to be done, including the actual content writing itself and ensuring that the language used met the quality bar of being clear and concise within a certain reading level. It was actually a fairly rigorous process and bar to have our writing pass these checks in order to go and get submitted through. Mostly because I am the queen of long-winded run-on sentences. So, as a content writer, that made it a little bit difficult. But that's okay. I made it through it. And then, you know, also in wanting to accommodate a wide range of learner types, one to keep the content broken up and interesting as opposed to just walls of text. But again, also to accommodate different learning types. We also have a lot of short snippets of video content and pictures that take the concepts discussed in the text and show that information through hopefully more engaging video-based examples. So, having somebody on your team that has a knowledge or experience of creating media and graphics, doing some pretty heavy video editing and things like that. Things that all kind of seem to be minor when you're in a tech space, but when you don't have that form of support officially, it does tend to pile up a lot for a single person to take on. And then, of course, depending on the scenario, actually getting all of your beautiful text and videos and media onto the host platform. In this case, ours was just using GitHub and some markdown. But definitely another I feel like lesser thought about aspect of creating these sorts of courses is the technical side of things as well that does end up taking a lot of time and resources in some cases. And then some more learnings or barriers I'd say was when choosing the appropriate level or difficulty of the content. We knew that we wanted this course to be entry-level or beginner, but ensuring that we maintain consistency in writing that fine line of beginner concepts when there's just so much talk about when it comes to accessibility was really a challenge that we had to keep ourselves accountable for. Not getting into any specific code snippets or mentioning specific developer engines or platforms or middleware and things like that. And then I think as well in choosing to create many of these concept videos to accommodate different learner needs, we one had to make sure that they were accessible, but also had to create most of the content from scratch. Because when introducing something as complex as accessibility to someone new to the topic, it wasn't as simple as taking screen grabs from an existing game and commenting on them, showing this was not accessible, but now it is sort of thing. Especially when we're trying to discuss examples where something is not accessible. So creating fictional games and game UIs to get these concepts across was both very time consuming, but also something that may have not necessarily been the ideal choice, but was really just a limitation of the nature of the content that we were putting together. But needless to say, in just a few months shy of a year that the course has been out, we're super excited to report that at least among those who were signed into a Microsoft account when taking the course, that there has been thousands of individual module badges and full LearnPath completion trophies awarded. And we're hopefully just getting started. So we really appreciate everyone at GAComp for inviting us to talk more about the course, maybe spark some ideas for folks. And as always, please reach out, share your feedback. We're always doing our best to listen to how we can be better. Thanks.