Cátia Casimiro has a Bachelor's Degree in Applied Communications, as well as a Master's Degree in Organizational Communications. Her Master's Thesis focused on the equity of organizational communication between hearing people and people with hearing loss. She is currently a PhD student in Communication Sciences and her thesis will focus on the written accessibility of boardgame rules.
Dr. Michael James Heron is a Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design and Software Engineering, working at Chalmers University of Technology. His primary research interests are in accessibility, games, and accessibility in games. He is also the editor of Meeple Like Us, probably the most comprehensive data-set of board game accessibility available on the Internet.
Dr. Carla Sousa has a PhD in Communication Sciences from Lusófona University, where she also took her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, her Master's Degree in Clinical and Health Psychology, and a Postgraduate degree in Applied Neuropsychology. Carla is part of the Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (CICANT) and is an assistant professor in the Bachelor's Degrees in Psychology and Videogames at Lusófona University.
One of the first steps necessary for playing a board or roleplaying game is to read the rules. There is an underlying assumption here at least one person at the table has to know how to read. The cognitive load that rules can have on the players can be substantial and can impact the act of understanding the rules, as well as influence the play experience. Learning a game requires specialist literacy. The inability of players to learn the rules of a game through the rule-book might be a consequence of that material’s cognitive expectation, not an inadequacy of the player. As such, this paper aims to propose best practices and initiate the discussion on the accessibility of rulebooks. To achieve this, several considerations were made around cognitive accessibility in games, cognitive load, and the effect that Easy Language can have on lowering it. We also discuss the definition of a rulebook, how rulebooks are used (and abused), and the underlying assumptions when designing rulebooks. These considerations allow us to conceptualise best practices for improving rule-book accessibility regarding visual, cognitive, physical, communication, socioeconomic, learning, and intersectional accessibility. However, some questions remain unanswered regarding how to create rulebooks that are accessible and entertaining, and as the best practices presented are conceptualisations, they still have to be validated in a real setting with a diverse group of players.
