Accessible Games and Education:

The increasing importance of the video games entertainment industry has prompted different efforts to promote the inclusion of accessibility features within games. Whilst the field of academia has produced relevant and promising results, mainstream producers are still reluctant to invest in access-for-all. However, in the field of academia there is also a growing trend towards introducing games and game-like activities into educational settings usually labeled as ‘serious games’ in an attempt to explore other learning approaches and to improve the engagement of students. Yet while entertainment games can (arguably) opt to ignore accessibility, educational games must be inclusive and cannot afford to ignore it. In this paper, we present our approach to promoting accessible educational games. To reduce the barriers to and costs of creating accessible educational games, we explore the use of game creation tools with built-in accessibility features, as opposed to adding accessibility features ad hoc to existing educational games. Draft version. Please visit http://www.e-ucm.es/publications/all/ for updated citation information DR AF T