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Over the next few weeks, Access-Ability episode uploads are going to be a little bit more sporadic due to me travelling a fair amount for work. One of the work trips that I have coming up is to cover Gamescom, Europe’s biggest video game convention, and an event that I have complicated accessibility thoughts on.
I attend Gamescom as a member of the press, meaning that for me much of my time at the event is spent in dedicated media areas. For me, the event is largely spent in fairly quiet back rooms seeing games in pre-booked appointment slots, with a degree of quiet and space to engage with the game demos on show.
This is not the average Gamescom experience.
Gamescom welcomes through its doors each year more than 350,000 members of the public, and as such the event is undeniably chaotic and stressful for disabled attendees on the public show floor. From the handful of times my appointments have taken place at show floor demo booths, the experience has best been categorised as getting trapped in the currents by a human river. You go where the currents take you, and you hope that that’s where you’re trying to get to. It’s crowded, loud, bright, and an overall sensory nightmare for me as an autistic attendee.
Gamescom is not an event that I could attend as a member of the public. It would be impossible for me to have a positive time there.
Now, this is not to say that Gamescom as an event isn’t making efforts to be more accessible, and some of those efforts I’m really appreciating.
Last year, I published an episode of Access-Ability detailing the ways that Xbox were making their Gamescom show floor both area accessible for disabled attendees, ranging from making sure that all raised areas were accessible for wheelchair users via gentle ramps, to having a quiet area available, earplugs available to help autistic attendees, and sign language interpreters available, alongside staff in clearly identifiable accessibility logo branded shirts, and adjustable height demo stations with accessibility controllers available for use.
Beyond that, a few weeks ago Gamescom themselves announced some new accessibility requirements for developers with booth space at the show, as well as some recommendations clearly inspired by Xbox’s Playbook for Accessible Gaming Events. Exhibitors on the show floor this year will be required, for example, to ensure that stands have step free access available to all areas, including guidance on things like maximum angle gradients for those ramps, and requirements to ensure that there’s enough space to navigate the booth with a wheelchair. They’re also offering guidance suggesting that booths should, like Xbox’s booth space, offer adjustable height demo stations, accessible controller options, suitable light levels for low vision attendees, and more.
While these are all really positive steps to see Gamescom take, there is something I would love to see Gamescom and other similar scale public facing video game events implement in the years to come, particularly events that are as busy and with as lengthy queue lengths as Gamescom experiences.
So, let’s talk about Virtual Queuing Systems.
A virtual queuing system is, in essence, a way for disabled people who might struggle with a traditional queue to access attractions. It’s not a pass to skip wait times entierly, but an accommodation to how those wait times are managed.
In principle the idea is that if I as an autistic Gamescom attendee were to go to a booth to try a game demo, and the estimated wait time was two hours, someone at the booth would note down the current time and the estimated queue wait time. If it was currently 11am, and the wait time was two hours, I could return two hours later at 1pm and play that demo. I would still need to wait the two hours to play the demo, but would not need to wait those two hours in the physical queue.
Virtual queuing systems are useful for a wide variety of disabled people, for a wide variety of reasons. They allow me as an autistic person to find somewhere quiet and less crowded to wait, rather than using up all of my energy being stuck in a crowded and sensory overwhelming space. They might help someone with IBS who needs to make unexpected bathroom visits to avoid the stress of leaving a queue and trying to return to it without looking like they’re cutting in line. They might help a wheelchair user to avoid the stress of navigating tight U-Turns in a queue that’s too narrow for them to comfortably navigate because it wasn’t designed with them in mind. It could help someone with chronic fatigue or chronic pain who wasn’t allowed to bring a folding chair into the venue, and can’t stand or sit on the floor for extended periods of time. The list of disabled users that this kind of system helps is vast.
While I’m thankfully in a position not to personally need virtual queuing systems at Gamescom, as someone largely attending pre-booked appointments, I can speak from personal experience about how useful virtual queuing systems are as someone who has made use of them in the past at theme parks over the past few years.
For an example of how these systems can work in practice, I’ll talk through my recent experiences at UK theme park Thorpe Park.
Prior to my trip to Thorpe Park, I registered with an independent UK organisation to access something called an Access Card. I provided this organisation with some evidence of disability diagnosis, and the categories of accessibility I would personally find useful. I was assessed, and issued a card with some icons that communicate what accessibility needs I have, but that don’t out my specific disabilities themselves.
Then, on the day I attended Thorpe Park, I went to an accessibility desk, showed them my card, and was issued a paper pass. On one side was accessibility information for all the rides at the park, and on the other side was an empty table.
When going to a ride I would enter a specific accessibility queue where the ride staff would note down the current time and the current general queue wait time estimate. I could then ride the ride, but could not use the system again until that wait time had expired. This meant I could wait the full length of the queue sat quietly at a table with headphones on, rather than in a queue full of people.
That implementation of the system isn’t perfect. Thorpe Park requires people to register their accessibility supported visit in advance, accessibility support can “sell out” on certain days, and the system required a degree of formalisation of my accessibility needs in advance to access, but on the day itself it offered a simple, low tech way of making queuing accessible across multiple attractions.
Something like this could be supported at an event like Gamescom, with some planning, as an event wide accommodation. A paper document provided at an accessibility desk, allowing for demo access via virtual queuing for those who need it. It would require booths to work out how to estimate wait times which can be tricky to do accurately, but is something that could be worked on as an event wide accommodation option over time.
That said, I do suspect there would be some pushback to implementing a system like this at an event like Gamescom, based in large part on the current situation unfolding at Disney theme parks with access to their DAS disability accessibility service.
A couple of years ago, accessibility access for virtual queuing systems at Disney parks was pretty simple. Prior to travelling to a Disney Park you could organise a video call in which a member of Disney’s DAS team would ask you questions about your accessibility needs. In most cases they did not require formal proof of disability to be shown in the form of paperwork, and took a good faith approach to assuming that people requesting support were being honest about their access needs. On approval, the disabled person would gain access to a digital virtual queuing system in a mobile app, allowing for guests to book a return time for a ride based on the current estimated wait time, queuing elsewhere and coming to the ride when their queue time was over.
However, this has recently changed. Disney changed their DAS system in recent months to be far more restrictive, only issuing access to virtual queuing for people with a very small number of disabilities, being far more arbitrary and strict in the assessments of who needs access to virtual queuing, and no longer allowing people to apply for accessibility accommodations prior to booking a trip, meaning that people have to book their visit not knowing if they will be approved for access accommodations.
One example of this that I’m frequently seeing recently, autistic park attendees are being denied virtual queuing access at Disney because they could instead purchase fast pass access on a per ride basis for the same effect. A paid service is not an adequate replacement for accessibility accommodations, and in practice this prices many disabled people out of support that they were previously being granted.
The reasons for this change in strategy are numerous. While I won’t go into all of the alleged reasons, the most compelling explanation seems to be misuse of the system by people without disabilities looking for a “cheat” to beat the queues, and non-disabled guests complaining about seeing disabled guests getting to, as they saw it, “skip the line”.
Virtual queuing systems are often misunderstood as being a mechanism for disabled people to race around doing far more in a day than a non disabled person. They’re seen as a magical line skip that lets you go on a bunch more rides, or play a bunch more demos, for no good reason. They’re seen from the outside as some perk that disabled people get that non-disabled people are excluded from, and that encourages resentment, and attempts to “beat the system”, that can really hamper attempts to implement this kind of accessibility support at events.
On the contrary, I can say from personal experience that these accommodations are not a magical line skip for disabled people to wedge extra fun into their day. As a virtual queue system user at theme parks, these systems have allowed me to not burn out and have to head home early. They reduce the pressure to rush from ride to ride without breaks, and allow me room to decompress without feeling like I’m wasting time that I should be using trying to ride more rides.
On my last Thorpe Park visit for example, I spent 40 minutes watching a Nintendo Direct on my phone with my headphones on, just mentally resetting and detaching from my surroundings, sat at a table far from any major attractions. I could do that because I was simultaneously queuing for a ride. Without virtual queuing, I’d have felt the need to spend that time in a queue with other people, with the sights and sounds of a ride constantly blaring. I would not have been able to spend a full day at the park without those breaks from the sensory overwhelm of all of the rides happening around me and the people around me.
Requiring attendees to pre-book virtual queuing support, and requiring them to provide evidence of a disability, can cut down on abuse of systems, but it also places barriers between people and access to services they may need. It is a tricky line to walk, but one that I very much fall on the side of encouraging reduced access barriers. You may find some people get upset or try to cheat the system, but anything that risks preventing a disabled person from getting access on the day to useful accessibility support is in my book not the right approach to take.
Swinging back to the idea of implementing virtual queuing at an event like Gamescom, while I don’t foresee event wide virtual queue support coming to Gamescom any time soon, I do thing that it would be wonderful to see individual companies at Gamescom, EGX, PAX, or similar events take it upon themselves to offer virtual queuing options for disabled guests at their booths at these kinds of events. A stack of paper time cards for return visits, and a sign with the game accessibility icon advertising where to access support, could go a long way to helping disabled people access demos that might have lengthy queues.
Virtual queues help a huge variety of disabled gamers. If you’ve got a booth space at Gamescom, or EGX, or PAX this year, it’s not too late to think of ways that you could support virtual queuing for disabled guests who might benefit from it.
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