What you need to know
- AbleGamers works to make gaming available to disabled people.
- Today, AbleGamers announced the DPAD initiative, which will work to provide free access to accessibility training for marginalized developers.
- The initiative came about as a result of recent conversations and protests around racial injustice and the pandemic.
AbleGamers is a nonprofit organization that works to make gaming more accessible for disabled gamers. Today, it announced that it is launching the Developers Promoting Accessibility & Diversity initiative, or DPAD. This initiative will provide marginalized developers, specifically those who are "disabled, of color, women, and/or members of the LGBTQIA+ community" free access to a session of the Accessible Player Experience Practitioner (APXP) Course.
APXP provides training on how to identify accessibility issues during design and solutions to these issues. The courses, which lasts for two days, are normally $2,000 and will continue to be offered outside of DPAD. Originaly, the courses were also offered in-person but since the pandemic, they'll be virtual. Going forward, a virtual option will also be offered.
AbleGamers also spoke out earlier this year when the widespread protests against police brutality and racial injustice began. The company began holding internal conversations on how to further support minorities.
"The DPAD Initiative is one of the outcomes of those conversations," said Greg Haynes, lead games user researcher at AbleGamers. "Through the DPAD Initiative, we hope to see that support extended to developers from other marginalized communities. We're hoping to create a diverse diaspora of game developers who are bastions of accessibility in an industry that's increasingly seeing the importance of accessible design practices."
The course is available online now. Any developers interested in applying to the DPAD initiative can do so right here.
