Within the next two weeks Red Herring Games, the UK leader in murder mystery games will be launching their new website which aims to support customers through some great new “universal design” features which have been incorporated as standard to support minority groups.

Coming from a background of Occupational Therapy, the Managing Director Jo Smedley has always had a disability friendly approach and has been custom tailoring games to order for a number of years to help those with partial sight or difficulty hearing.

“We’re really proud to be working with a website engineering team who have the same mind as us.” Jo Smedley said. “Without any prompting from us, they began the long process of subtitling all our inspector videos and when they arrived at the office last week to tell me what they’d done I was overjoyed!”

Subtitling on the latest inspector videos makes the inspector recordings much more friendly for those who struggle with hearing, but it also supports crowded spaces where the sound doesn’t travel well.

“We’ve been using closed captions on our virtual events for some time” said Jo Smedley. “One of our regulars asked if it was possible, so we checked, and it was! Of course, we’re reliant on zoom transcribing perfectly, which as anyone will know from watching subtitled live news, can produce some interesting results. However it was something easy to add into our virtual events, which made them more accessible too.”

Their next event coming up at the weekend (Death in the Alps) will also carry close caption subtitling.

As well as video subtitling, the team have created “page per view” booklets making them easier to enlarge, and have also added into each plot two gender neutral guests making it easier to cast parties with uneven guest gender numbers, but also supports those who consider themselves part of the gender minority.

“We’re always customising kits to help party planners” explained Jo. “We’re running a virtual event for a group in America this week who have clients with complex needs. I’ll also be acting in that event, to ensure anything complicated is explained in as easy a way possible for those who find it difficult to process.”

Customising and tailoring games to order is at the heart of this UK small business. It’s something you just don’t get from mass produced game creators, which is why small businesses like Red Herring Games continue to thrive in the game space, even if they aren’t winning on the price war.

“We’ve never aimed to be the cheapest” said Jo. “It’s not something we could ever aspire to. Creating a cheaper product means mass production, and that removes the support and help we provide day to day. I don’t think any of our customers want a cheaper product. They all come to us because they know they’ll get first class service, a first class game, and that any questions they have will be answered speedily. Our answer is always “yes” to any question. We just have to work out HOW to make it possible.”