Abstract
Over the past few decades, video games have grown from a novelty of entertainment into one of the largest media industries in the world, even surpassing the film industry. The COVID19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of gaming in people’s lives, not only as art and entertainment, but also as a way for people to connect while remaining socially distanced. However, it is only in more recent years that accessibility options have begun to enter a mainstream role in the gaming industry. For blind players or players with significant visual impairment, the benefits that video games can bring are largely out of reach. Certain audio-based games (audio games) are available to them, but these are far from mainstream and are generally developed on little or no budget. The solution often suggested for this lack of accessibility is a development process which features accessibility as a core design pillar; in this process, accessibility features would be implemented within the primary development cycle of a game, differing from the current norm of adding accessibility features at the end of development or post-launch. This thesis discusses the current state of accessibility in the gaming industry, builds upon it by introducing a novel accessibility-driven game development process, and presents a new game in the rhythm genre developed using this process to implement blind-accessible features. The game, titled Feel the Rhythm, introduces novel visual impairment accessibility features to the rhythm game genre and may serve as a blueprint for how a higher budgeted game could implement similar accessibility options if developed using a similar method.