Besides the obvious ones, there are some aspects that few people think about. Let's start with a common element of text. There are a lot of text strings inside modern games: menu labels, rule descriptions, in-game notifications, subplot elements as messages, and diaries. They are an essential part of the game products, they help to navigate, drive a story, and so on. But in some cases it is hard or impossible to rely on them. First of all, regular players do not like big portions of text, especially if it appears in pages, without any accents, comfortable paragraphs of small size, and so on. Then there are some players who find it hard to read, or the speed at which they read is not fast: small kids, people with different forms of dyslexia (a state when a reading process is impeded in some form), and people who speak other languages. Besides, developers always try to provide localizations for their titles; in many cases that is not enough, it is very hard to cover all the common languages.

All these categories may have trouble interacting with the game, because they do not get the words or it is hard to read them. It means that other elements should be used on par with texts. First of all the menu navigations, game rules, and so on, must be pretty logical and clear to understand without any additional descriptions. Then special non-verbal communication elements should be used widely, as icons or other types of graphic illustrations of different actions. According to The International DYSLEXIA Association, up to 15–20 percent of the population have some symptoms of dyslexia in various forms of slow or inaccurate reading. It means that some form of image-based communication can be more comfortable for them as well as for kids, especially when games are oriented on an audience that uses large buttons and some clear icons (they should not be very abstract as kids have no proper experience to read abstract symbols; hence, they should be small illustrations with small scenes of actions shown clearly).

Overall, to increase readability of text, it should come in portions; there should be a good contrast with the background (but not too sharp as black on white for example, it should be a little bit milder). Sans-serif typeface such as Helvetica are good, the background should not be too motley.

An intentional audience can, in some cases, understand basic text lines written in English, but in many cases, it cannot. Even simple words such as race, go, fire, and so on can be incomprehensible for some people. To check if a game is accessible for such players, it should be tested without any text shown on the buttons.

Besides the texts, there is also another "Lost in translation" case. The intended customers can have trouble perceiving cultural elements; first of all, different references on events or traditions that are pertaining to a specific territory or country. The general content should be quite multicultural, but some minor things may have more specific connotations that help a wider audience to understand the plot, character's motivations, principle of design and rule, and so on.

Also, keep in mind some specific taboos, respected objects, traditions, people, or historical events in different cultures. A harmless content for a certain type of people may hurt the senses of others.

The following are the links you can refer to for additional information on topics that are used in this chapter: