Lecture | CADS Research Seminar
Doing accessibility: Turning play into a media ethnographic research method
- Judith Boersma-Willkomm
- Date
- Thursday 8 October 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Agora
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden - Room
- 1A.01
For many people, playing video games is an essential part of everyday life, providing distraction, relaxation and social interaction. However, gaming literacy and accessibility to video games are not things you can take for granted. The need to make video games more accessible to everyone has long been structurally neglected by the booming gaming industry (Spöhrer and Ochsner 2024; Ellis et al. 2023). Parisi points out that many developments and standards in game design can be traced back to notions of ideal-typical standard users and standard play (cf. Parisi 2024). Most game controllers, for example, are designed for use by right-handed people who can hold the controller with both hands. Many game interfaces assume that players can see and hear at the same time, can read, and have internalised the basic principles of navigation in games.
It was not until 2018 that Microsoft, with the Xbox Adaptive Controller, became the first games console manufacturer to release a product explicitly designed for people with dis_abilities. Previously, people who could not meet the game’s requirements or cope with its mechanics were excluded from playing or had to find individual solutions to their problems through workarounds, hacks or adaptations, for which they had to invest their own time and resources and seek help (cf. Ochsner 2024). This project on accessibility and adaptive infrastructures in gaming is based on a media ethnographic approach that redefines social, physical, sensory, material and in-game interactions by using alternative modes of playing together (cf. Willkomm 2025). It aims to find barriers by running into them and seeing how they can be reduced. By understanding play as physical, cognitive, and social a more encompassing view on barriers and counter strategies is developed.
In my talk, I will provide an overview of my research and my research methods. Afterwards, I would like to invite you to try out and experience playing with adaptive gaming setups. It would be great if we could then reflect on these experiences from a media anthropological perspective.
About Judith Boersma-Willkomm
Dr. Judith Boersma-Willkomm is a visiting researcher here at CADS and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Literature, Art and Media Studies at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Using media ethnographic methods, she examines the interplay between technical media and the human senses. Her current work focuses on the intersection between media theory and disability studies, challenging normative ideas about bodies and media. She is interested in practical, everyday approaches and is researching areas such as gaming culture, blind football, live audio description, sign language interpreting, and data collection practices in science (for example, bioacoustics).