Learning has always felt urgent to me.

In my early twenties, I experienced a significant head injury that left me with lasting cognitive effects. I lost around five years of memories. Entire chapters of my life now exist only in stories told by other people. Since then, memory has never felt guaranteed. I have had to rebuild confidence in my ability to retain, connect and understand.

What that experience taught me was not fragility, but the importance of building strong connections through learning. If memory can falter, understanding must deepen. If recall is unreliable, curiosity must become constant. Education became not just a pathway, but a way of holding on.

I went on to complete a science degree and later a PhD. Today, I work at the University of Manchester as Technical Operations Manager for FBMH, supporting complex scientific environments and the people who work within them. In that role, accessibility is not abstract. It is practical. It shapes laboratories, procedures, communication and systems. If something is difficult to use, it excludes. If something is unclear, it creates risk. Good design removes barriers before they become obstacles.

Accessibility is also deeply personal in my home life. My partner is registered blind. Everyday interactions with printed materials, games, signage and packaging reveal how often access is treated as an optional add-on rather than a starting point. So often, accessibility is retrofitted. Rarely is it foundational.

One day a friend came by and introduced my partner to a card game. I’ve been an avid gamer for decades but the inaccessibility of most games meant that my partner and I had never really played together. This one was accessible, not reliant on swathes of tiny text, and for the first time she was able to join a game. It drove me to really look twice, at every games fayre, through every games shop, but all I could find was a sea of inaccessibility.

That raised a question for me: what would happen if we treated accessibility as a design constraint rather than a retrofit?

Constraint, in design, is not limitation. It is clarity. It forces better thinking.

• Instead of asking how something looks first, you ask how it functions.
• Instead of asking what is impressive, you ask what is usable.
• Instead of designing for the majority and adjusting later, you design for inclusion from the outset.

Those questions eventually led me somewhere unexpected.

At a local art club, where I keep one foot in my artistic roots, I had been sketching marine life inspired by my love of the sea. Clownfish sheltering among anemones. Moray eels weaving through reef crevices. Butterflyfish pecking at coral. The reef is an ecosystem built on interdependence, symbiosis and adaptation. It is also fragile, shaped by pressure, competition and environmental change.

Gradually, those illustrations evolved into something playable.The result is a card game inspired by marine biology, but founded upon accessibility. We named it Enemy of My Anemone.

From the beginning, the game was designed around access. Text sits in high-contrast lozenges so it remains readable against detailed artwork. A clean sans-serif font is used throughout. Font size is kept at 20 point wherever possible. Iconography is simple and consistent. We play-tested with players with visual and cognitive impairments to reduce unnecessary strain and complexity. The rulebook will be available in a fully illustrated digital format with ALT text, compatible with screen readers.

These decisions were not aesthetic afterthoughts. They shaped the mechanics themselves. Clarity improves gameplay. Strong visual hierarchy reduces fatigue. Simplicity enhances strategy rather than diluting it.

In many ways, the project reflects the values embedded in the University’s commitment to social responsibility and equality, diversity and inclusion. Inclusive design is not only about compliance or policy. It is about widening participation. It is about asking who might be unintentionally excluded and redesigning systems so they are not.

Whether in laboratories, classrooms or creative projects, the principle remains the same: when you design for the margins, everyone benefits. Designing with access in mind is not a special feature. It is simply good practice. And sometimes, if you follow that principle far enough, you might even end up creating a game.

It has been play tested by so many wonderful students across FBMH and the wider university. We’ve now joined in collaboration with the Round View project to enhance an already amazing suite of games which promote sustainability. And we’re about to launch the game onto the public stage, if you’re interested you can have a look, here.

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