Organizers of the 2017 Game Developers Conference are lining up lots of great talks for the show, including an important one on improving your game's accessibility from a prominent Madden developer.
EA Sports' own Karen Stevens will be presenting a talk entitled "Game Accessibility: Practical Visual Fixes from EA's 'Madden NFL' Franchise" at GDC next year that will break down, in practical terms, exactly how (and why) you can make your game more accessible.
According to Stevens, over half a million Madden NFL 17 players are colorblind, and over 25 million people in the United States have other visual disabilities. Her presentation covers several of the visual accessibility settings in the game from simple tweaks such as optional enlarged game art and brightness/contrast controls, to a novel colorblind solution involving no game asset changes.
So make time to check it out and see how player engagement aided in creating big wins on a small budget. Example code will be made available in supplemental slides, but no programming (or football) experience is required.
And there's lots more to come! Conference officials look forward to announcing more GDC 2017 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead. For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is January 25, 2017. GDC 2017 itself will take place February 27th - March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on GDC 2017, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
