A cartoon car zooms to the left of the image, ahead an explosive collision is happening in front of a crane, causing cars to fly through the air. The pink and black logo in the top left reads Joyride, Survival of the Fastest.

I worked with Rebellion Unplugged on their board game, Joyride, and their RPG magazine, Adventure Presents.

I acted as an accessibility consultant for Unplugged, helping them to find approachable wins and ways to improve the accessibility of their tabletop games, while keeping the high production costs of components in mind. I also launched their accessibility page for information sharing and player resources.

Comparison images of the standard versus high contrast dashboards and initiative track. At the top is a dark high contrast dashboard, below it a light high contrast dashboard, and the initiative track at the bottom.

Joyride

I was brought in near the end of development on Joyride, and so focused on finding ways to maximise accessibility with the components the game had. I championed the case for car icons for each car that would help distinguish unique pieces like ability tokens, and provide a visual alternative for the initiative tracker and car token - where these were printed on the reverse side.

One of my biggest contributions was facilitating the creation of High Contrast versions of player dashboards and initiative track. The dashboards are the main place a player keeps their pieces during play. Using the reverse of the dashboard, this means we were able to create an alternative design that focuses on readability and legibility. We dampen the artwork, provide solid backplates to key areas and text, change and increase the font, and provide a reference for your car token. We took prototypes to a meeting with RNIB where we got feedback which spurred us to make the light versions of the dashboards, for when the wooden pieces would be dark and therefore stand out more against a light dashboard. This feature got an incredible response from the community, including posts on board game geek, mentions in podcasts, and on review sites.

“Joyride is an absolute explosion of colour, and I would understand if you find that overwhelming. To help the player boards and cars have a high contrast side, letting you dial down the graphics a bit to make the game more pleasant to play for you. It is this sort of accessibility consideration that makes Joyride such an excellent production.”

- Giant Brain, Joy Division

"I struggle with visual noise and it was actually really well done. [...] It muted the things that weren't important and elevated the things that were, and it worked great for me. Different people have different needs in terms of what visually works for them, but in terms of ADHD brain - that side was great." ​

- No Pun Included Episode, Joyride, Invincible, Wilmot’s Warehouse

Downloadable Resources

I helped my accessibility champion, Alysa Thomas - production manager at Unplugged, to create high contrast stickers for Joyride. This would give someone the opportunity to download and apply high-contrast stickers with larger text and greater readability onto the components of the game.

I also created 3D printable files for tactile dice for joyride, for both the standard car dice and the Nitro dice. These dice are available in both standard and braille.

Lastly, I helped with the creation of supplementary resources to eliminate an unintentional memory barrier. Some players found it hard to remember which lap they were on, or which gate they were headed to - especially as they cars can quickly get turned around. I design two different ways to track gate and lap, available in 3D printable files or paper printable. This optional resources helps to alleviate that barrier and provides options as to how players prefer to track their gate and lap. The team highlighted the resources in a news post, and some community members started designing their own versions of the trackers. A version by ActiveBit is more material efficient and introduces braille into the trackers.

Image of the paper printable versions of lap trackers, showing Gate Tracker tokens with unique colours and icons per car.
A screenshot of a project on printables by ActiveB1t - a compact lap and gate tracker that uses D6 dice and has options for braille or embossed text.
A group of fantasy adventurers hide behind a book, they are tiny and one holds a needle and another a match. In the background a large ginger cat is stalking towards them. At the top of the image is the logo for Adventure Presents.
Four 3D printed six-sided dice sitting on a spread of Tiny in the Tower. The dice are printed in light grey plastic, and feature recessed faces with embossed pips. Two show standard pips and two have letterboxed recesses with braille.

Adventure Presents

Adventure Presents is aimed to be a series of approachable RPG magazines that someone can pick up and have everything they need to play, from character sheets and map handouts to rules guides and a multi-session campaign.

My contributions to Adventure Presents include guidance on text formatting and readability for future magazines, such as left-aligning text and avoiding italics. I also suggested boldening skill checks as a usability feature, so that a game master can easily find them in a paragraph.

I also helped to facilitate the creation of Easy Read and Screen Reader accessible versions of Tiny in the Tower. The Easy Read versions are printer friendly, in a larger, clearer font and more accessible formatting inspired by Easy Read document standards. The columns of the magazine are gone, replaced with a single column of text on each page, and the decorative elements are stripped back to key art. We also looked at making the character sheets as approachable as possible, including introducing icons for skills to dual-code them.

Lastly, I also created tactile dice for Adventure Presents, again in both standard pip and braille versions.

Screenshot of the Accessibility page for Rebellion Unplugged, the title reads Accessibility, and behind is a cartoon car from Joyride. A subheading on the page reads accessibility resources.

There isn’t an established convention of displaying board game accessibility information and, unlike video games, board games don’t have the luxury of a settings menu and can’t always provide alternative components. As all games are made of intentional barriers, it felt important to approach board games in a way that publicised the intended barriers and highlighted any other unavoidable barriers. This way, players have as much information as possible to know if a game is going to have a barrier that might block them from parts of play.

I began by looking at the broad areas of accessibility; Motor, Cognitive, Visual and Audio, and then breaking those down into board game accessibility categories. I found from a cognitive perspective there was reading, maths, memory, strategy, puzzle solving, and content & themes. From a motor perspective was mobility, dexterity, speed, component size and table space. Visual included both the visual clarity of icons and game areas, and text clarity. Communication was an interesting area with both social cues and general communication.

To help provide an at-a-glance look at what each game entailed, I created a rated system which can be represented with pips for non, low, moderate and high. This was inspired by BFFC ratings of shows and TV.

Each heading then goes into detail on what the intentional and unavoidable barriers are, and where possible highlights any alternatives or accommodations that can be made. Visual aids accompany the explanation, and there is also a brief description of what exactly the heading covers.

Accessibility Information

I worked with unplugged and our web team to create an accessibility hub page for the Unplugged website, similar to the one in the Rebellion video game space. This page holds resources and information around accessibility in the tabletop games. I’m really proud of the resource pages for the games, as I built this system with my accessibility champion in unplugged to help best represent accessibility in tabletop games.

An accessibility overview of Sniper Elite the board game. Below a banner for the game is key information like playtime and player count. Below that is a brief description, followed by three columns of headings, each with an icon and a rating.
A detailed section of the Sniper Elite accessibility page showing the maths section. It is rated moderate - 2 out of 3 - and has detailed text explaining numeracy in the game and an image showing how to count line of sight on the board.

Advocacy & Events

I have been able to join the team at events like PAX Unplugged and the UK Games Expo. While there I have been able to help with accessible booth considerations, including extra space for mobility aids, a dog bed and water bowl for service dogs, and providing accessibility information on the stand.

I helped with approachable game teaching, part of which includes asking up front if anyone demoing a game had any access needs. This simple step had a very positive reception from attendees.

In 2023 I moderated a panel, Accessibility in Tabletop Games, at UK Games Expo. Panellists included accessibility specialist Stacey Jenkins, accessibility journalist Nikkie Harper-Williams and my unplugged accessibility champion, Alysa Thomas, board game production manager for unplugged.

Rebellion Unplugged booth at a gaming Expo. Yellow and pink tablecloths and pop up boards advertise Joyride. There is ample space between tables for mobility aids.
A printed page on a table with an accessibility logo and the words "Gaming is for Everyone". Below is a list of accommodations, like large print player aids and a service dog bed.

Extended ALT text: Text on the left reads "Let's Play!" followed by the Sniper Elite 5 Logo. Beneath are two circular headshots of Edd and Cari, and text below reads "with special guests Edd Waterhouse-Biggins and Cari Watterton." To the bottom right is the RNIB DFEG logo.

A sheet in a plastic stand on a table, with the heading "Accessibility Information". It provides a quick overview of some of the core mechanics and features of Sniper elite the board game and adventure presents.
A tweet from Rebellion Unplugged showing a dog miniature on a dog bed in front of a copy of sniper elite the board game. The tweet encourages players to ask if they need to use the bed and lists the booth location.