Enhancing Accessibility for Collectible Card Games: Adopting Guidelines, Applying AI, and Creating New Guidelines

The development of accessible digital games has been discussed through multiple publications in the 21st century; however, little to no attention has been given to analog gaming. Like video games, Collectible Card Games (CCG) have also gained massive popularity, but no accessible guidelines have been created to assist their base. With the aging of gamers that started playing thirty years ago and the strain the card’s text places on the player’s vision, accessibility work is needed in this area. The need for inclusion in gaming is critical because it can act as a medium for social interaction and a learning tool for teaching. In addition, technologies that can help those with disabilities, such as microcomputers and Artificial Intelligence, can be used to help those disabilities. In this paper, we adopt guidelines from video game accessibility and create a proof of concept that applies Artificial Intelligence and affordable microcomputers to assist those with low vision. After evaluating 53 evaluators, we found that the text-to-speech and volume of information caused significant issues; however, most ratings and responses showed that the proof of concepts functioned as an assistive technology and was successful.