From first-person shooters to economic management games, Ubisoft’s catalogue offers something for every type of player. However, unintentional barriers can sometimes prevent players from fully enjoying games as developers intended. For instance, people with chronic pain may be unable to use complex control mappings, while those with colour blindness may have trouble distinguishing HUD elements.
That’s where Ubisoft’s accessibility team comes in. They’re working with teams across the organization to remove these barriers, not just in our games but throughout Ubisoft’s entire ecosystem. We had a chance to speak with David Tisserand, director of accessibility, Aderyn Thompson, lead game accessibility design specialist, and Billy Gregory, web accessibility program manager, to learn more about the history and progress of accessibility at Ubisoft.
A glaring need in the industry
Accessibility has been a topic in the tech field for decades but was only recently tackled by the video game industry. For Ubisoft, a catalyst came after the release of Assassin’s Creed in 2007. “The deaf and hard-of-hearing community said they couldn’t follow the story because there were no subtitles,” recounts David, director of accessibility. “HQ took that comment very seriously and made it mandatory for all games to have subtitles after that.”
Over the next decade, an accessibility task force was put in place to provide game teams with a list of necessary features and validate their integration at the alpha, beta, and master stages. David was working on Assassin’s Creed Origins when he joined the task force, and he recalls that “we quickly realized that it wasn’t enough to just give recommendations and check if they were implemented. Development teams also needed to know how to achieve those goals.” This mandate required dedicated people working on it full-time and, David says, “That’s how I created my own title – which didn’t exist at the time – of accessibility project manager.”
At E3 2019, while assessing the accessibility of Ubisoft’s booths, David spotted a chance to talk with the company’s CEO, Yves Guillemot. In a 10-minute conversation, David shared his dream of making accessibility part of every team’s workflow in line with Ubisoft’s core ambition to bring memorable gaming experiences to as many players as possible. Yves loved the idea and, a few months later, allocated resources to form a team to bring that vision to life.
Accessibility as design
Once formed, the accessibility team approached developers to see how it could best support them. Aderyn Thompson, lead game accessibility design specialist, explains that the team’s approach is about “looking to the future and seeing what accessibility will mean in 10, 20 years from now, and how we can push it forward.”
Traditionally, features like subtitles or control mapping have been an afterthought. “The reason,” Aderyn explains, “is because partway through development, teams realize that their game is not accessible, and at that point, the only thing they can do is repair the problem.” This approach leads to unexpected extra work for the developers and an unoptimized experience for players. To avoid both issues, a better approach is to make the core design of the game accessible from the start.
Fighting games, for instance, rely heavily on player reactions for combat move sets, which people with disabilities often find more difficult to perform. The Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown team solved this problem by designing visual and audio indicators for combat: colour, lighting effects, shapes, and sound cues let players know what attacks are coming up. “There’s more than one pathway to information,” Aderyn explains, “which allows players with disabilities to learn those reaction times and make them work with their own body.”
“The point is to make the experience equitable,” he continues. “If our game is meant to be challenging, disabled players should experience the same level of challenge, and not because of their disabilities, but because the game is meant to be challenging. Some designers may hear that and say: ‘Well, that’s just good game design.’ And that’s the point: good game design is accessibility.”
The result of compassion
To incorporate accessible design into the development process, David’s team offers their support from the very start of a project. “The designers that are there at the beginning are the ones building the pillars of the game, so it’s important to start with them,” Aderyn notes.
In collaboration with the accessibility team, the user research team runs workshops that bring in the perspective of disabled players and teach the concepts of accessibility by design. “All good designers will design with the player experience in mind,” Aderyn says, “and the only reason that inaccessibility happens is because they’re simply not aware of what the disabled player experience is.”
To highlight that experience, the team brings in players with motor and chronic pain, hearing, vision, and cognitive disabilities to talk with the development team. The discussion begins with their daily lives and the challenges they face as they move through the world. “These players don’t necessarily reflect the entire community,” Aderyn notes, “but it’s a beginning to understand our many disabled players and to build compassion.”
These guests then play a game similar to the one the developers are creating – either a previous one in the series or one in the same genre – and explain how they interact with it, leaving room for the developers to ask questions and think about how they could solve accessibility issues. “The same solution won’t work for every game, because every game is different,” Aderyn explains. “The solutions should be tailored to fit the team’s creative vision. The devs are always the owners of their design, so it’s up to them what solution they go with.”
An end-to-end experience
Although games are Ubisoft’s focal point, they’re supported by an elaborate network. David explains that his team wanted to tackle not just games, but the entire Ubisoft ecosystem, “from the first time our players hear about a game up to the last time they interact with it.” This scope includes events, the store, game engines, forums, and customer support, among other areas.
Players often enter this ecosystem through events like Ubisoft Forward, and the communications and events teams have achieved tremendous leaps in accessibility in the last few years. “We try to be as inclusive as possible so that everyone can learn about our games and play them,” says David. Ubisoft Forward is now subtitled in 12 languages, including American Sign Language, and is audio-described in English.
Another crucial entry point for players are the company’s various websites. These websites are run by multiple different teams, and helping them implement accessibility standards is the purview of Billy Gregory, web accessibility program manager. “We look for common barriers that might trip up someone with disabilities, so we don’t inadvertently exclude some users” he says. “I’m there to guide the teams, but if we’re talking about doing the actual work, that’s the teams themselves.”
A large part of Billly’s role is ensuring that all teams have access to useful and consistent information, which is why he has added accessibility recommendations to the Universe Design System. “The Universe,” he explains, “is like a recipe book for creating web components.” For example, if a developer from the Ubisoft Connect team has to create a button, the Universe Design System will give them recommendations about the code, the expected interactions, the expected outcome, and its accessibility requirements. And this same recipe can be used by all developers, regardless of what team they’re on. “It’s one giant resource that teams can draw and learn from,” Billy explains, “and our goal is for every public-facing website to use it.”
In working with teams across Ubisoft, Billy has conducted a lot of training sessions and upskilling initiatives on accessibility. “The teams are great,” he says. “They’re really willing to learn, and it’s just about empowering them and allowing them to do the work.” Some teams have even reached out on their own, like the internal web unit. “They were very keen and they’re probably one of our champions right now,” Billy continues. “They’ve made it a lot easier for Ubisoft folks to navigate our internal ecosystem, and it’s just the beginning of our efforts to create a more accessible workplace.”
If you’d like to learn more about Ubisoft’s efforts to welcome diverse perspectives in its development teams and its player community, visit the diversity, inclusion, and accessibility page.
