[games_access] FuturePlay 2007

[Kevin J. Bierre]

Michelle asked for a brief rundown on the workshop we did at FuturePlay, so here it is.

FuturePlay is geared more towards academics and gets a high proportion of professors and students from game development programs in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. There were probably about 200 attendees, so it's not really a big
conference.

We were told we had 40 people signed up. I'm not certain how correct that count was, but we had about 20 show up for the session in the morning. This was still a much bigger turnout then we had seen even at GDC. About 15 of those stayed for the entire
session, which ended around 5 PM. (The session statrted at 10:15 am, with a lunch break and a coffee break in the afternoon.)

We started with an explaination of accessibility and why it was needed. Michelle had the audience tell why they were attending and who they were. We had a fair number of students, some professors and instructors, as well as some people from game or
software companies.

We then went over the effects of disabilities on gamers and did a demo of Doom3 without sound to show how the game played for the deaf. After lunch, we started out with Doom3 [CC] to show an approach to dealing with gaming if you were deaf. From there we
demoed some other accessible games and went into the accessibility arcade. In addition to the games Michelle and I brought, Eitan Glinert brought AudiOdyssey and demonstrated it. We also had the audience try the "Game Over" game created by Dimitris and
his team.

After the arcade, Michelle went over some resources and groups that are available and I went over some current research and accesibility training at some schools. Finally there was a conclusion and discussion period.

One of the things that impressed me the most about this group was the level of interaction. We had some great discussions and a lot of questions. People were very involved. I'd consider this to be one of our more successful presentations.

Kevin Bierre,  Associate Professor                                                       (kjb at it.rit.edu)
Information Technology,  Rochester Institute of Technology                585-475-5358
102 Lomb Memorial Drive                                                                       Bldg 70-2637
Rochester, NY 14623