Analysis: Accessibility of VR Games Could Be Better

Laura Meiser

1 a

, Kristina Nagel

1,2 b

and Maria Rauschenberger

1 c

Faculty of Technology, University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Emden, Germany

Department of Computer Languages and Systems, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

Keywords:

Accessibility, Virtual Reality, Games, Software Test, Guidelines.

Abstract:

The rapid growth of the video game industry, including the niche of virtual reality (VR) gaming, highlights the

signiﬁcant market potential and demand for accessible gaming options. Despite many people with disabilities

engaging in video games, a substantial part of this group ﬁnds current offerings inaccessible, thereby restricting

their gaming experience. This study assesses the accessibility of popular VR games by applying a comprehen-

sive set of guidelines adapted from existing guidelines. We analyzed the ﬁve top-rated VR-compatible games:

Beat Saber, Tetris Effect: Connected, Half-Life: Alyx, Microsoft Flight Simulator (MFS), and Assetto Corsa.

Our ﬁndings indicate that the overall accessibility of these games is not good, with only 42.36% of the acces-

sibility tests passed on average. The MFS is a positive outlier with 74.71% of the tests passed, which may be

attributed to Microsoft’s development of accessibility guidelines and controllers. Our study underscores the

necessity for improved awareness and implementation of uniﬁed accessibility guidelines within the gaming

industry. We also recommends some low-cost but high impact improvements for the tested games.

1 INTRODUCTION

It was estimated that there will be 3.22 billion video

game players worldwide in 2023 (Howarth, 2023).

The total turnover of the video game industry was

187.7 billion US dollars (De, 2023). This suggests

that video games are a popular entertainment medium

worldwide. A small but still important part of the

video game industry is Virtual Reality (VR) Gaming

that has become more prevalent due, e.g., to the con-

sumer friendly head displays (Epp et al., 2021).

In 2021, approximately 43% of individuals with

disabilities engaged in gaming (Mosely et al., 2022).

Yet, 50% of these players agree that current games

lack accessibility, and 71% would play more if games

are more accessible (Baltzar et al., 2023). This

demonstrates huge potential for the current games

market, since currently, 1.3 billion or 1 in 6 people

have a physical or mental disability (World Health Or-

ganization, 2023). This means, that about half of this

population currently cannot play, and thereby will not

buy, video games. Designing games in an accessi-

ble manner is important, not only for the market, but

also for disabled users. Increased accessibility would

https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8986-7424

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8625-4903

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5722-576X

support people with permanent disabilities, but also

people who are temporarily impaired due to an ac-

cident (Grammenos et al., 2009). Since VR games

are still a young ﬁeld, potential shortcomings are not

fully investigated yet, e.g., the application of gamiﬁ-

cation and virtual reality in higher education (Nagel

and Rauschenberger, 2024). Hence, in this paper, we

present an analysis of the accessibility in popular VR

games. Thereby, showing that the accessibility in VR

needs improvements and giving recommendations on

how to achieve a better accessibility.

2 BACKGROUND & RELATED

WORK

Recent research about the accessibility of VR-

Experiences concentrates, e.g., on the analysis of in-

dividual experiences regarding the accessibility of VR

(Hamilton, 2018; Mott et al., 2020), and on more de-

tails like the usability of VR controllers for elderly

(Cook et al., 2019).

For a more systematic approach to the evaluation

of the accessibility of digital applications, there are

numerous accessibility guidelines. For example, Ac-

cessible Player Experience (AbleGamers Foundation,

2022), GAG (Game Accessibility Guidelines) (Game

358

Meiser, L., Nagel, K. and Rauschenberger, M.

Analysis: Accessibility of VR Games Could Be Better.

DOI: 10.5220/0013038500003825

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2024), pages 358-362

ISBN: 978-989-758-718-4; ISSN: 2184-3252

Accessibility Guidelines, 2023) and Xbox Accessibil-

ity Guidelines (Microsoft, 2023a). There are also VR-

speciﬁc guidelines like XR Accessibility User Re-

quirements (W3C, 2021) and Oculus VRCs: Acces-

sibility Requirements (Meta, 2023). Guidelines, that

are speciﬁcally for analyzing the accessibility of VR-

Games are available with the guidelines of Heilemann

(Heilemann et al., 2021). They are based on the afore-

mentioned guidelines and include all test cases rele-

vant for VR-games.

Previous research, that applied these guidelines,

was for example based on the locomotion technique

used in VR Games, where it was found that most VR-

Games already adhere to the best practices (Ander-

ton et al., 2024). But, to the best of our knowledge,

there is no comprehensive comparison of the accessi-

bility of current popular VR-games yet. We plan to

use the summary of accessibility guidelines for VR

from Heilemann (in the following called Heilemann

Guidelines) (Heilemann et al., 2021) to get an over-

arching understanding of the current status of acces-

sibility of VR games, in contrast to previous research

which focused more on speciﬁc details or subjective

experiences.

3 METHODOLOGY

To analyze popular VR-Games, we apply the follow-

ing research process shown in Figure 1. The overar-

ching process consists of step 1, 2 and 7 (blue, top

level), the detailed test is described in step 3-6 (yel-

low, lower level).

In the ﬁrst step (Figure1, step 1), we deﬁne

the Heilemann Guidelines as our evaluation criteria

(Heilemann et al., 2021). The Heilemann Guidelines

consist of 7 categories with overall N = 104 test cases.

They are based on the GAG, but also include the other

guidelines mentioned above. For the creation of the

Heilemann Guidelines, several established accessibil-

ity guidelines were evaluated and ﬁltered by what is

directly relevant for VR environments and games. Af-

terwards, the texts were adjusted towards VR use. Re-

peating parts of the analyzed guidelines were sum-

marized. The result of these steps is a set of guide-

lines that combine and summarize all rules for acces-

sible VR games based on current research (Heilemann

et al., 2021). The 7 categories tested were Input and

Controls, Audio and Speech, Look and Design, Sub-

titles/Captions, Simplicity, VR and Others. All test

cases can be found in the original paper (Heilemann

et al., 2021). Test cases are sorted into the categories

that are most ﬁtting for them, but can also be relevant

for other categories (Heilemann et al., 2021).

Next, we chose to evaluate the 5 highest rated VR

games in the last 10 years, according to Metacritic

a website that aggregates reviews of various media

(Metacritic, 2023). The games needed to be VR com-

patible and did not need to be VR exclusive, to not

exclude the majority of VR games, as most games are

not platform exclusive. Hence, for the analysis we

have these 5 games Beat Saber, Tetris Effect: Con-

nected, Half-Life: Alyx, Microsoft Flight Simulator

(MFS) and Asseto Corsa (Metacritic, 2023) (Figure1

step 2). From the evaluated games, only Beat Saber

and Half Life Alyx are VR exclusive. Beginning

with step 3, we applied the following process for each

game: Prior to the game analysis itself, a minimum

length for the test run was deﬁned, after which no

signiﬁcant additional ﬁndings were expected (Figure1

step 3). For example, in Asseto Corsa one race had to

be completed. Because the general game mechanics

of further races stay the same throughout the game,

we found no further gameplay necessary. Next, the

actual analysis of the game was performed (see Figure

1 step 4): We tested the accessibility and gameplay

settings of the game by going through the settings

menus and comparing it to the guidelines (Figure 1

step 4.1). Following, the gameplay was tested for

any accessibility violations (Figure 1 step 4.2). Mean-

while, all ﬁndings for each evaluation criterion were

noted (Figure 1 step 5). This test was performed as an

expert evaluation. After ﬁnishing the test run we went

through all evaluation criteria to decide which passed

and failed (Figure 1 step 6). Finally, we compared the

overall results for every analyzed game and the results

of each category separately (Figure 1 step 7). The de-

tailed results of each test are available in the research

protocol (Meiser et al., 2024).

4 RESULTS

The results of the accessibility tests of each game are

shown in Table 1.

In Table 1, on the left side the test categories are

displayed and on the top the tested games. The av-

erage of test cases that have passed per game are dis-

played at the bottom and on the right per category. Ev-

ery test category has a different amount of tests, so the

categories affect the average differently. On average,

the MFS (51, 67%) delivers the best results and Beat

Saber (29, 87%) the worst. The best results per cate-

gory are in the category Subtitles/Captions (61, 11%)

and the worst results in the category Other (27, 94%).

The results are displayed as percentages because dif-

ferent categories have different amounts of criteria

and so the results could be misinterpreted.

Analysis: Accessibility of VR Games Could Be Better

359

Figure 1: Evaluation Methodology.

Table 1: Results of the tested Categories for each game.

Test Categories VR-Games

Beat Saber TE: C HL: A MFS Asseto Corsa Average

Input and Controls 27,27% 66,67% 16,67% 76,92% 66,67% 51,67%

Audio and Speech 25,00% 27,27% 30,77% 73,33% 41,67% 41,27%

Look and Design 33,33% 26,67% 31,25% 81,25% 40,00% 42,86%

Subtitles/Captions 0,00% 0,00% 71,43% 85,71% 0,00% 61,11%

Simplicity 37,50% 37,50% 25,00% 81,25% 12,50% 38,75%

VR 57,14% 80,00% 37,50% 42,86% 66,67% 54,55%

Others 14,29% 15,38% 20,00% 69,23% 23,08% 27,94%

Average 29,87% 36,99% 29,89% 74,71% 37,33% 42,36%

Figure 2: Results of all Games in absolute numbers.

Figure 2 shows the absolute numbers how many

tests have passed, not passed or could not be applied

to this speciﬁc game.

The only game that passed more test cases than

failed is the MFS. On average, the games failed n = 46

and passed n = 33.8 tests. Only n = 8 test cases were

passed by all games. n = 17 test case were not passed

by any game, examples for this are Avoid (or pro-

vide an option to disable) VR simulation sickness trig-

gers (GAG) and Allow for alternative Sound Files (In-

ternational Game Developers Association White Pa-

per). Furthermore, n = 14 test cases were only passed

by the MFS and no other game, examples for this

are Provide a stereo/mono toggle and adjustment of

balance of audio channels (GAG) and Provide pre-

recorded voiceovers and screen reader support for

all text, including menus and installers (GAG). Es-

pecially the results in the categories Look and De-

sign and Simplicity are noticeable when excluding the

MFS: In the category Look and Design 7 of 15 test

cases were not passed by any of the remaining games

and in the category Simplicity 6 of 15 test cases.

5 DISCUSSION

The results show, that the accessibility of VR-games

has huge potentials for optimization, only 42.36% of

accessibility test were passed. The result of the MFS

shows that it is at least possible to fulﬁll 74% of the

WEBIST 2024 - 20th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

360

applied accessibility guidelines. This shows consid-

erable differences to the other 4 games, which did

not even reach 40%. The reason for the results of

the MFS could be that Microsoft themselves devel-

oped their own accessibility guidelines and accessibil-

ity controllers (Microsoft, 2023b) in corporation with

the disabled community (Microsoft, 2023a). This

indicates MFS wants to have and follow guidelines

and prioritize accessibility in the development of VR

games.

The lack of accessibility in the other games could

have various reasons, e.g., due to the game play, lack

of awareness, technical challenges, market percep-

tion, or resource constraints. To give more insights,

many developers think that it would take up too many

resources to improve the accessibility of games (Yuan

et al., 2010). But there are many steps based on the

accessibility guidelines that demand no extensive re-

sources to be fulﬁlled. These guidelines should be

easy to implement and would improve the experience

of the player massively (Game Accessibility Guide-

lines, 2023):

For example, the guideline Allow controls to be

remapped / reconﬁgured should be one of the fastest

improvements, especially for players with a motor

disability. To pass this guideline, you have to im-

plement the option for the player to customize their

inputs (Game Accessibility Guidelines, 2023; Bierre

et al., 2004; Microsoft, 2023a; W3C, 2021; Meta,

2023). This is a feature most game engines should

already offer with little effort necessary (Brown and

Anderson, 2021). Players without a disability could

also proﬁt from a feature like this (Game Accessibil-

ity Guidelines, 2023).

Provide details of accessibility features in-game

and/or as accessible documentation, on packaging or

website is also a low-cost guideline, that does not need

any additional development resources (Game Acces-

sibility Guidelines, 2023). For example, the Xbox and

PlayStation store offer the option to display acces-

sibility features already (GameAccess, 2023; Sony,

2023). The implementation of this guideline makes

it easy for disabled players to decide if they should

buy the game. It can also increase the potential

player base for the game, because player with disabil-

ities search speciﬁcally for games with certain sup-

port features (Game Accessibility Guidelines, 2023;

Microsoft, 2023a; ETSI, 2018; IGDA Game Acces-

sibility SIG, 2021). This can also apply, when in-

cluding game elements in a non-game context. Re-

searchers should describe the implemented game ele-

ments (Hallifax et al., 2023) and one additional infor-

mation they should give would be the accessibility of

said game elements.

Indicate/allow reminder of current objectives dur-

ing gameplay should be a more advanced improve-

ment to the game, especially for players with a cogni-

tive disability (Game Accessibility Guidelines, 2023).

One good solution for this would be a quest log which

shows what objectives need to be or are already com-

pleted. Thereby, the player has an easy way to re-

identify their objective. Similar implementations are

mostly seen in role-playing games like Skyrim (Game

Accessibility Guidelines, 2023).

Other categories with low-cost, high-value po-

tentials, which are still rarely implemented in the

tested games are, e.g., Use simple clear language,

Allow interfaces to be rearranged, Provide a choice

of text color, low/high contrast choice as a minimum,

and Ensure no essential information is conveyed by

sounds alone.

Avoid (or provide an option to disable) VR simu-

lation sickness triggers (GAG) is a guideline that was

only partly implemented in the tested games. This

is a problem many players suffer from in VR Games

(Munafo et al., 2017), so we expected the games to at

least try to solve this problem, but there were no or

only lackluster options in all tested games. Options

that reduce motion sickness could be to Dynamically

reducing amount of peripheral vision during move-

ment or Giving the player a frame of reference (Game

Accessibility Guidelines, 2023).

By implementing guidelines like these, the acces-

sibility of the tested games could be increased signif-

icantly. But at least they would be given the option to

know in advance if the games have the accessibility

features they need.

6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

In total, we evaluated 5 games for their accessibil-

ity. The results show, that the accessibility in 4 of

the 5 games could be improved. One outlier being the

MFS, which delivers better results. We have shown,

that there are common accessibility guidelines that are

easy to implement with low effort, like the option to

remap controls that would also beneﬁt players that

have no special needs for accessibility. We recom-

mend to at least implement a documentation of acces-

sibility features in the game, so people with disabil-

ity know if they can play that particular game. Over-

all, game developers should read through accessibility

guidelines like the GAG at least once, so they real-

ize how easy and low effort it could be to implement

many accessibility features.

For future work, we aim to get more insights into

Analysis: Accessibility of VR Games Could Be Better

361

the accessibility of VR-games, through user testing

the games with disabled people and comparing the re-

sults with our expert-driven approach. Through this,

it may be possible to ﬁnd accessibility features that

were missed or misjudged in this test. Thereby, it will

be possible to assess the practical applicability of the

results of a test performed with the Heilemann Guide-

lines. Finally, we plan to provide developers with a

blueprint for better VR-accessibility.

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