Disability and the Digital Avatar

Disability and the Digital Avatar explores how disabled gamers experience identity and representation within video games.

The project began after hearing a conversation between game streamers were one shared selecting a character partly because their design reflected their own physical disability. This raised a wider question: how do disabled people find representation in games, particularly when their disabilities are less visible or cannot be easily reproduced through character design?

Through surveys, personal narratives and collaboration with participants, I initially expected to find a demand for more characters who physically reflected disabled players. Instead, participants frequently prioritised expression over resemblance. They chose characters because they were interesting, powerful or enjoyable to play, and valued games as spaces for fantasy, accomplishment, experimentation and social connection.

These responses suggest that gaming can offer a form of exo-experience: an opportunity to inhabit identities and experiences beyond the limits of everyday life. Disabled gamers do not necessarily need a protagonist who looks like them. However, they still value worlds in which disability is visible, meaningfully represented and treated with respect.

Using photography and Gaussian splatting, I translate participants into interactive, three-dimensional digital forms. By moving between the photographic image, the digital avatar and the virtual environment, the project examines the relationship between actual and constructed identity, while questioning where photographic representation ends and digital experience begins.

This video work is intended to play simultaneously alongside the six videos featured below. This opening video provides the soundtrack and context for the whole experience.