{"id":16291,"date":"2018-03-30T19:16:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/315983"},"modified":"2018-03-30T19:16:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T19:16:00","slug":"a-look-at-ea-sports-push-for-more-accessible-sports-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/03\/30\/a-look-at-ea-sports-push-for-more-accessible-sports-games\/","title":{"rendered":"A look at EA Sports’ push for more accessible sports games"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“<\/em>This has helped me understand the importance of inclusion and has greatly [influenced] my accessibility work.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– Karen Stevens shares how her own experiences gave her perspective<\/em><\/p>\n

FIFA 18<\/em> recently received an update that added in a host of new features geared at making the game more accessible. The new options gave players the ability to, among other things, enlarge clickable targets, remap controller sticks, bumpers, and triggers, or toggle an on-screen pause button that can be used with only a mouse on PC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following that update, Waypoint spoke with some of the key players<\/a> behind EA Sports\u2019 growing focus on accessibility about how those changes have been reflected in games and the company since.<\/p>\n

The story is one example of how developers can (and should, when feasible) implement new features and options to help make their games playable by as wide of an audience as possible.<\/p>\n

Karen Stevens, once a rendering engineer at EA, leads the charge as the company\u2019s first accessibility lead. Her efforts started during an internal game jam and yielded the addition of accessibility features like resizable icons for Madden NFL 17<\/em>. She now heads the company\u2019s accessibility drive and EA\u2019s Accessibility Portal<\/a> where she solicits feedback on features from players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI once asked a friend if he was looking forward to the next Madden NFL<\/em>, as he is a huge Raiders fan,\u201d Stevens told Waypoint. \u201cHe told me he can\u2019t play Madden<\/em> due to vision problems; he couldn\u2019t see anything that moved quickly and was small — like the pass icons. I decided that if I ever had the chance, I would try to improve the game so a wider audience could play Madden<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waypoint\u2019s full story has more information on Stevens\u2019 efforts, as well as a look at how accessibility options in EA Sports games have evolved in just recent years. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“This has helped me understand the importance of inclusion and has greatly [influenced] my accessibility work.\u201d – Karen Stevens shares how her own experiences gave her perspective FIFA 18 recently received an update that added in a host of new features geared at making the game more accessible. The new options gave players the ability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}