Access-a-WoW: Building an enhanced world of warcraftTM UI for persons with low visual acuity

Abstract

World of WarcraftTM (WoW) is a virtual 3D game that offers much in terms of entertainment and collaboration and enjoys extraordinary world wide popularity. However like many other applications that deliver the majority of information visually, the default user interface (UI) is potentially only marginally accessible to users with limited visual acuity. This paper describes the enhanced user interface (UI) we constructed to improve accessibility for these users. We performed a study comparing the two user interfaces; users had simulated low visual acuity. The results of the study suggest that our enhanced UI led to significant improvements in user performance and speed of game play. Our current enhanced UI and planned future work have great potential for expanding opportunities for a user group to participate in the WoW community more fully than is possible with the current UI. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.