Making Games Accessible: Love Letter

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Love Letter!

Recently I won a raffle and got a free copy of the game Love Letter from Alderac Entertainment Games and the accessibility kit made by 64 Oz Games. After learning about 64 Oz Games through Kickstarter, Aser and I have been excitedly following their work – we have Munchkin and Dominion assembled and ready to play and the two braille d20s Aser uses came from them as well. I wanted to show off my winnings, and when I go see Aser next week we’ll post a review for the game.

Accessibility Kit Contents
Accessibility Kit Contents

Each accessibility kit comes with written instructions and QR code to look up the instructions digitally, a set of Grade 2 Braille instructions and descriptions of the cards, plastic card sleeves, and Grade 2 Braille stickers. There’s some work involved to combine this all into an accessible game, but fortunately this game only has 16 cards, not over 500 like Dominion.

Cutting out the stickers
Cutting out the stickers

Once you have your cards and kit you cut out all of the stickers. I can read Grade 1 Braille visually, but I still ask Aser a lot of questions to make sure I’m sticking the right sticker on in the correct orientation. I made some mistakes when I tried to put together Dominion by myself and it was a pain to correct them.

Sticker and Sleeve
Sticker and Sleeve

Once you have your stickers cut out, you can stick them directly on the card or on a card sleeve holding the card. Aser and I decided to put everything on sleeves to protect the cards. The sleeves make the cards slippier, and the Braille causes them not to stack flatly, but that can be fixed by using card holders. The great thing is the stickers are see-through so sighted players can read the cards easily as well.

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The Aftermath

Once all the cards are in their sleeves you’re ready to go! There isn’t much text on these cards so the Braille fits on them easily. For other games, like Munchkin, the Braille is a short descriptor of the card and we were given QR code stickers to put on the back that Aser can scan to get the full description.

We’re huge fans of 64 Oz Games and the work they do to make it so Aser and I can enjoy all the board games we want. You can find them on their website, or support them on Patreon. Thanks so much for the free kit! And a special thanks to Alderac Entertainment Group for the copy of the game. We can’t wait to play and we’ll let you know how it goes next week.

 

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