AbleGamers Gives WarHammer "Most Accessible Mainstream Game" of 2008
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

In January, AbleGamers honored EA's Mythic Entertainment for their work in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning with the "2008 Game of the Year Award" for "Most Accessible Mainstream Game."The problem was first addressed on the AbleGamers forum. A registered user who had purchased Warhammer brought up the issue regarding the On-Screen Keyboard shortly after the game's release. Mark Barlet, Editor-In-Chief of AbleGamers, wrote Mythic regarding the issue on several occasions.

Upon Warhammer's September 18, 2008 launch date, the game had accessibility features covering a wide range of disabilities right out the box. This includes options for the physically disabled such as mapping nearly all actions to the keyboard, or playing the entire game just by using a mouse or special controllers. There is also text for all key events to aid the hearing impaired and the game has also been made accessible to the colorblind.After months of attempts to get Mythic to understand that this was not just an additional feature request, but a real need, a final push from AbleGamers got us in touch with the Mythic's Director of Community Relations, Bob Mull. After a conversation on the dire importance of the issue, Mythic went ahead and added the On-Screen Keyboard and later brought us in to show us the fix and let us know a patch is going out in a few weeks.

"At AbleGamers, we want to make sure we reach out to these game companies to get them to start really thinking about accessibility," Barlet says.  "Sometimes it's just hard for us to break through the noise, but when we did break through the noise, Mythic really responded."Despite the features available upon launch, members of the disabled community still had one concern: Warhammer did not work with the On-Screen Keyboard. This is a tool gamers with physical limitations use to type data on screen with a mouse.