The topic of accessibility was originally addressed in this post. Here’s a related post about vision-friendly cards and an interview with a vision expert. Brian Chandler also offers his thoughts in From Wingspan to Wyrmspan: An Accessibility Journey. Below is the current chart for the accessibility levels of each Stonemaier game, followed by several videos on this topic:
14 Comments on “Accessibility”
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Ironically, this accessibility chart is now the proverbial “eye chart”. There’s no option to zoom in and display a larger version. As-is, it’s difficult to read the text on the y axis, and near impossible to differentiate the games on the x axis unless you really know your Stonemaier Games … which okay, I mostly do. ;-)
Seriously though – would love to see a readable version of this chart.
Happy to help! You can zoom here (and on any website) by holding down “Ctrl” and scrolling on your mouse wheel. The chat is fairly high-res, so you can zoom in based on your needs for a higher resolution chart. :)
I have recently received Wingspan as a gift. It is a beautiful game, but unfortunately I am visually impaired and the cards are extremely hard to read. In fact, I can barely read them at all. The style of font and the grey writing is not ideal for visually impaired people.
I love to play games with my family, but I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to do so when I am unable to see the board or game cards. Do you have, or have you considered, creating Wingspan cars that are large print? Having to have assistance reading your game cards takes away the independence of playing your turn. It also requires so much more memorization as you try and remember what your cards say. I would like to play with the same ease as the rest of my family.
Thank you,
Kari
Kari: Thanks for your note! This is something we’ve heard over the last few years, and we recently released vision-friendly versions of the Wingspan cards. They’re the second product discussed on this page: https://stonemaiergames.com/games/wingspan/accessories/
I am a big fan of some of these games, and I love that you are looking at accessibility and rating your games in these categories. I have two suggestions that I’d personally find helpful:
First, this chart relies on game box images only to identify games and could be improved by adding titles to the chart or adding a legend with titles. I don’t know all of the games your company makes and am looking for new games to buy, but the image isn’t high enough quality to read the titles when I zoom in. Having to cross reference your chart with your store images just to figure out which games fall in each category makes the chart itself not very accessible.
Second, I think this could be further improved with details and ratings for complexity as it relates to cognitive skills and differences. I’ve worked with adolescents with significant intellectual disability and also have several friends and family members with various cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and trying to find a board game to play with any of these groups can be very challenging.
For example, if I wasn’t already familiar with Wingspan (which I love), I’d consider your “great” ratings for the game under “learning” and “retention” to indicate that the game rules are rather simple and the guides very helpful. The guides are in fact helpful, but Wingspan is a rather complex game that in my experience took 3 neurotypical adults several hours to learn. I see now that you aren’t really rating these games on a complexity scale, or at least not one that is inclusive of less complex options.
Your company publishes wonderful games and many are quite complex, which is fine. It would however be helpful to have more information posted about the complexity of games to help consumers match games to the skills of their players.
Ratings related to the relative number of rules necessary to understand how to play, the relative variety of options for players’ turns (for example, rolling a die, moving a piece, and then following an action card on every turn are discreet events that are more straight forward than choosing between 4 different types of turn action trees), and the complexity and mathematical requirements of scoring or tracking progress. Knowing that arithmetic is essential to tracking progress, but that turn action choices are limited may make a game perfect for some gamers and a difficult choice for others.
All of your games may be scored as challenging for individuals with cognitive processing issues, but providing a general rating and a little bit of information on what aspects make each game challenging would help many looking for the right challenge level for their gaming group. Any information on that subject would help advance this genre beyond simple age ratings to make board game choice more accessible.
Thanks so much for your feedback, Anne! I’m going to incorporate game weights (from BoardGameGeek) into the chart to address some of your concerns. The chart is just a summary; I think if someone wants to dig deeper into these games, some research (reviews, playthroughs, rules, etc) is necessary.
I enjoy playing Wingspan. I am rather disappointed that I have not been able to find replacements for the scoring sheets. Could you please inform me where I might find them? Thank you. Molly Kahan
Molly, can you let me know the search terms you tried on our webstore so we can make the scorepad easier to find in the future? I typically find it by searching for “scorepad,” and it pops right up. You can also find it by going to the the Wingspan webstore page and clicking “View all Wingspan products.”
https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/extra-scorepad-for-wingspan?_pos=1&_sid=f93eca025&_ss=r
Really glad to see this! It’s very helpful!
Wanted to point out that there are contrast issues with Rolling Realms. The text at the top of the cards is hard to read with it being faded white against marbled backgrounds, especially against the light-colored backgrounds. Also, we had trouble seeing the yellow star and coin icons against the white background, especially the stars on The Society card.
Thank you, Sarah.
I agree, Sarah. I struggle seeing the text on a few of these cards and wish there were reprints available that are easier to read. A lot of our game play takes place in bars where the lighting is less than optimum, which makes contrast issues even worse.
We’re improving this with the reprint and all future promos.
This is awesome – thanks for making it!
I’d suggest My Little Scythe is Ok/Poor (for colorblindness, specifically). I was not able to play it off the shelf; required modifications. The issue and reason for this is described quite well in the SM Design Diary,
I’m guessing Wingspan is Ok due to small font size? I thought it was quite visually accessible, and I’m curious what might’ve “dinged” it. In particular, if the small font is reserved for flavor text, IMO that’s acceptable given the competing values and small space available on each card.
Thanks Brian! I’ll adjust the rating for My Little Scythe. As for Wingspan, we’ve heard from a few people that the text is too small (it’s 10pt), though maybe they’re mostly talking about the flavor text.