What's involved with making a big-budget, tightly scheduled game franchise like Madden more accessible?

Electronic Arts' Karen Stevens offered up an answer at GDC 2017 earlier this year, when she took the stage to explain that accessibility "is a mindset, not a feature" and offer attendees a look inside the process of making the latest Madden game more friendly to visually-impaired players.

That included adding in features like brightness and contrast controls, of course, along with an option to enlarge the art; but Stevens also explained how the Madden dev team came up with some ways to make the game more accessible without modifying its assets (creating a special filter that makes the game more readable for people with some types of color blindness, for example.)

It was a helpful talk for devs to watch, and now you can do just that over on the official GDC YouTube channel!

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

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