Do you remember playing Space Invaders? Did you have it on your old ATARI 2600? I can remember my visually impaired friends gathering around the floor model TV to play. We’d play that thing for hours! We sometimes felt bad for our friends who were totally blind. They could shoot at things and move the joystick back and forth, but it wasn’t the same as actually being able to see the screen.
That’s why I’m so excited about accessible games. There are lots of titles that blind and visually impaired people can now choose from. But what about people with other disabilities? What games do they play? Wouldn’t it be great to have one game that we all could play?
Access Invaders is an accessible alternative to the retro arcade game we all know and love.
Access Invaders is a fully-functional game, developed by the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of ICS-FORTH in close cooperation with the Centre for Universal Access & Assistive Technologies, in the context of the Universally Accessible Games (UA-Games) Activity. The game can be played in Windows and GNU/Linux. It can be concurrently played by individuals with different abilities and preferences, including people with disabilities, e.g., low-vision, blind and hand-motor impaired.
Access Invaders can be played using any or all of the following:
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Joystick
- Game pad
- Binary switches
Additionally, for people who can use only one switch, the option of automatic scanning is available. It also features spatial (3D) sound and a screen reader (for presenting textual information).
