Abstract
The study of game accessibility to date has largely focused on the topic of accessibility within a video game context. Largely underexplored in the academic and professional literature is accessibility in the domain of tabletop games, especially those that are classified as part of the ‘hobbyist’ market. An ongoing series of research annotations, published on the blog Meeple Like Us, has been aimed at addressing this lack of attention. In this paper, the authors report on the work of the Meeple Centred Design project which to date has examined 116 board games for the accessibility issues they manifest and the lessons that can be learned for designers in this space. While the project has not achieved significant coverage of even a fraction of the available library of hobbyist games, currently numbering approximately one hundred thousand, it has discussed the issues with many of the most critically success and popular of these titles. This paper reports on results to date, methodology of the analyses, limitations of the project, and the future plans for work in this interesting game accessibility context.
Highlights
The topic of accessibility in digital products is relatively well discussed in the academic literature
The study of game accessibility to date has largely focused on the topic of accessibility within a video game context
The authors report on the work of the Meeple Centred Design project which to date has examined 116 board games for the accessibility issues they manifest and the lessons that can be learned for designers in this space
Summary
The topic of accessibility in digital products is relatively well discussed in the academic literature. There is a vibrant academic discourse that takes places around the topic of accessibility in physical environments This includes areas of real world impact such as transport (Rode et al 2017), health (Kwan 2013), and access to buildings (Karimi et al 2014). Unexplored in any context though is the topic of physical game accessibility, best represented by board games, card games, miniatures games and other tabletop recreational experiences The popularity of these titles has been increasing at a considerable pace in recent years with the hobbyist tabletop game market surpassing a billion-dollar market cap.. We report on the first eighteen months of the Meeple Like Us project which is aimed at addressing this deficiency in the literature
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
