Audio Game Maker: game building environment for the blind
The Bartiméus Accessibility foundation has announced the development of Audio Game Maker, an application which enables visually impaired people to make their own computer games. A first prototype of the application is scheduled to be released in Februari of 2007.
Audio Game Maker aims to increase the number of computer games for the visually impaired, since very few accessible computer games exist. Many visually impaired players want to create their own games but give up when confronted with programming difficulties and other technical issues. Creative players manage to modify existing games with their own recorded sounds in order to make 'new' games. Despite these efforts, there is a huge demand for an accessible tool that enables visually impaired people to make computer games.
Audio Game Maker aims to be a solution for this problem by offering a simple and accessible game building environment. Audio Game Maker is part of project Game Accessibility, a series of activities conducted by the Bartiméus Accessibility foundation in order to improve the accessibility of computer games for players with impairments. Accessibility has been researching the accessibility of computer games over the past few years, and participated in the development of two games for the blind: Drive, an audio racing game, and Demor, a location-based audio-augmented reality game.
Please submit your suggestions, wishes and recommendations at the Audio Game Maker forum (Game-Accessibility website) or the AudioGames.net thread, if you prefer to use your AG login. Please fill in the questionnaire, in order to help the developers to create the game maker you want!