The very first episode of Access-Ability, back before this was a weekly recurring segment with its own series name, was published four years ago in January of 2020, and since then a lot has changed for the better with regards to accessibility in the video game industry.
While there’s still a lot of progress our industry could, and should, be making to improve gaming accessibility for disabled players, as I sit here at the start of 2024, it’s clear that we have seen a LOT of improvements to the quality, and quantity, of accessibility seen in the average big budget AAA video games releasing from most major publishers.
While certain aspects of accessible video game design are still exciting and experimental new frontiers being explored by creatively ambitious developers, other aspects of accessible design are at this point either becoming fairly commonplace, or are being done at a consistent level of quality by those developers taking the time to implement them in their games.
So today, on Access-Ability, we’re going to be discussing the accessibility features that I think we need to see video game developers and publishers pushing to make standards in the video game industry going forward into 2024.
Now, to be clear, when I say that the following video game accessibility settings should be standards going forward, I’m not suggesting that every game developer down to the smallest indie dev should be forced to implement every one of these features starting today if they want to be allowed to release a video game. I’m also not saying that any accessibility feature that I leave off this list isn’t important, or shouldn’t become a commonplace part of the video game industry eventually as the medium changes and grows.
Some accessibility features that I think are really exciting for our industry, such as sign language interpreter support and audio descriptions, are still in their infancy in the gaming space, and developers are still experimenting with proper implementation methods. Some accessibility settings come with time, technical resource, or financial constraints to implement them that will not be feasible for every single developer. But what I do believe, however, is that the below list of features should be considered achievable best practices to strive for, and that if every big budget AAA video game developer was expected to do their best to implement them, this medium would be much more reliably opened up to a whole host of disabled players.
If a game developer or publisher is able to afford millions of dollars in marketing spending, they should probably be expected to hit the standards discussed in this video.
Subtitle and Text Standards
Starting off simple, addressing a complaint I’ve seen for years within the video game industry from disabled and non disabled player alike, the video game industry should be standardising minimum text sizes in video games, with customisation options for both in game text and subtitle text, to ensure that all in game text is legible on a first boot of a game, and can be set to a large enough size to be easily legible for partially sighted blind players.
With regards to subtitles themselves, video game developers should be ensuring that their subtitles are not only able to be set to reasonably large sizes, but should also feature support for opaque backgrounds for contrast, in non-stylised fonts, with support for alternative dyslexia friendly fonts, with options available for including speaker names, customising text colour per character, and ideally including directional indicators for where speakers are in a scene.
In a perfect world, developers should also be offering closed captions, rather than simply dialogue subtitles, ensuring that non dialogue information is conveyed to deaf players. This includes ensuring that music that is important to tone is described, and that licensed music is at the very least mentioned by name, even if limitations can make it difficult for the licensed song’s lyrics to be shown in subtitle files. Sometimes there is an expense associated with that, ideally the lyrics would be shown, at the very least mention what the track is.
Subtitles should also be timed to appear on screen in line with when the corresponding line of verbal dialogue is being spoken, so that players with cognitive processing disabilities who use subtitles as supplement to spoken audio are able to follow both at the same time.
Accessibility Previews in Menus
This next accessibility standard is pretty simple, and requires minimal explanation. Settings options in game menus should be presented ideally alongside an in menu preview of the setting in action, so that players can see at a glance if a new subtitle size, for example, is going to suit their needs without needing to go into the game to check, then back to the menu to tweak it some more.
Multiplatform Accessibility Controller Support
Toward the end of 2022, we talked about the fact that former Nintendo of America CEO Reggie Fils Amie revealed in an interview that Nintendo had, at one point in time, been working on a multiplatform accessibility controller, inspired by the Xbox Adaptive Controller, that would have functioned on all of the major video game consoles available today.
Compared to when we published the 2023 version of this video, we are seeing progress in standardising accessibility controller availability on consoles. For the first time in the history of the video game industry, all three major video game console manufacturers, Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation, each have support for an officially licensed accessibility controller on their consoles. Each device comes with its own pros and cons, but every console has at least one option available aimed at supporting disabled players with customisable alternative controller solutions.
However, as much as I love the Xbox Adaptive Controller, it’s only officially supported for use on Xbox and PC. The Hori Flex for Nintendo Switch only works on Switch and PC. The PlayStation Access Controller only works as intended on PS5, and sort of works on PC a little bit.
Each of these controllers is very much specific to its console. If one doesn’t work well for you, you can’t use an alternative from one of the other systems. If you want to game on all three consoles, you’re going to need to buy multiple controllers which are more expensive than the standard controllers for those consoles.
While charities such as Special Effect exist, and do great work creating custom controllers and financially supporting accessibility controller acquisition, right now we have a video game industry where accessibility focused video game controllers are, while more affordable and accessible than they used to be, still a pricey additional expense for disabled players, that cannot be used across consoles.
Whether we see a third party company like Hori create a controller with a switch for hopping between different console connection modes, or one of the major console manufacturers negotiates letting players use an existing controller across all three major systems, cross platform accessibility controller support for a singular modular controller base is a step that the industry feels overdue in taking.
We’ve reached a positive point of progression with the release of the PlayStation Access Controller, and the Hori Flex, and the Xbox Adaptive Controller, but we can still push for a better future where at least one device is available that works across the board.
High Contrast Mode
Originally introduced to mainstream audiences in The Last of Us: Part 2, High Contrast Mode is a wonderful feature that’s hugely impactful for partially sighted blind players, as well as those with conditions such as ADHD or Autism who lose track of details within visual clutter.
While previously the near exclusive domain of PlayStation first party titles, 2022 saw the release of the rebooted Saints Row which featured its own custom implementation of the feature. While progress outside of PlayStation was slim in 2023, we did see a last minute announcement in December that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was also getting high contrast mode support added.
In addition, The Callisto Protocol and Hogwarts Legacy also contained some High Contrast Mode support. It’s starting to get out there, but slowly.
Sony doesn’t own the concept of High Contrast modes in video games, and the sooner we see every major video game developer and publisher start adopting the technology, the better. This is one of the best accessibility features available to disabled gamers today, and deserves to be placed on any list of future industry standards.
Xbox, you own Activision Blizzard now. They just implemented High Contrast Mode into Call of Duty, follow their lead and standardise this in your first party titles going forward as well.
Co-Pilot Mode
Co-Pilot Mode is a system level Xbox feature where two controllers can be registered as a single user, allowing for both to control the same character. This allows for controls to be split into more comfortable positions, an accessibility controller to be used in conjunction with a regular controller, or for a second player to assist with in-game actions that would otherwise be a barrier to progression.
2022 saw Co-Pilot mode implemented outside of Xbox, with the mode appearing in PlayStation exclusive Horizon: Forbidden West, showing that Xbox doesn’t exclusively own the feature.
In 2023, PlayStation implemented support for the feature on PS5 on the system level, supporting the use of two DualSense controllers tied to a single user, or up to two Access Controllers and a DualSense at the same time.
While PlayStation’s implementation is slightly more limited, not allowing for independent button remapping of the two co-pilot operated Dualsense controllers or reorientation of DualSense controller hold directions, it does largely allow the same sorts of accessibility positives that were seen on Xbox previously.
With Nintendo rumoured to be releasing a successor to the Nintendo Switch in 2024, I’d really like to see them catch up with Xbox and PlayStation in this regard and implement a Co-Pilot Mode equivalent on a system level on their next console, as it’s an incredibly useful feature.
If the Hori Flex is going to be supported for use on the hypothetical Switch 2, allowing Co-Pilot functionality so that a one handed Joy-Con style control could be incorporated into an accessible controller setup, would be a really positive step forward to see.
Standardised Accessibility Store Tags
Sticking with Xbox and PlayStation for a moment, one of the most important yet under-discussed accessibility updates this console generation was Xbox’s implementation of Accessibility Tags on their digital game store, allowing disabled players to, at a glance, find out which accessibility settings options a game has, without having to leave their console dashboard.
What made Xbox’s accessibility store tags system so impressive was the way it functioned. Microsoft has quality requirements to receive a tag on the Xbox store, and that requirement of reaching a quality bar to receive an accessibility tag allows for a degree of consistency and reliability for disabled players.
A game on the Xbox store in theory won’t, for example, get the subtitles tag simply for having subtitle support if those subtitles are small, inaccurate, and unable to be customised.
It’s not enough to have subtitles, you need to have good subtitles to get the tag.
This system of requiring games to reach a set level of accessibility quality to receive these accessibility tags, as well as the presence of the tags themselves on the store pages for these games, allows Xbox players to find out if a game is going to be likely to be playable for them before purchase, without having to go onto Google and look for an accessibility review that hopefully mentions the piece of information that you’re searching for.
While we don’t have as much transparency from PlayStation on their process, they did implement their own version of this accessibility store tags feature in 2023. It’s unclear if they have the same kind of process for approval of tags, but the positives of the system remain intact.
In terms of the role that the tag system plays in informing disabled players about settings they’ll have access to, and encouraging quality of execution from third party developers, I think that the system is nothing but a positive, and should really be adopted sooner than later by Nintendo on their own storefront. They’re currently the only major console manufacturer not standardising the offering of accessibility store tags, and a new console generation would be a great opportunity to catch up to the competition.
Beyond that, we need to start seeing more third party game developers commit to seeking accessibility store tag approval for their games on these digital storefronts. Both Xbox and PlayStation see some third party use of the feature, but it needs to eventually become a standard.
In a perfect world, I’d like to see accessibility store tagging become an aspect of certification on consoles, ensuring that the tags are consistently available across game stores for disabled players.
Accessibility Setting Announcements
On a similar topic, while we have seen increasing numbers of games released by companies such as PlayStation Studios detailing their accessibility settings ahead of a game’s release, and providing early review copies to accessibility focused critics for pre-release reviews, accessibility settings reveals are still often being treated by the major video game studios and publishers the same way as other hype building marketing reveals, doled out by PR close to release, long after they’ve been locked in by development teams.
Accessibility settings support is not the same as other gameplay features, and shouldn’t be held back by PR in the same way. Knowing what accessibility settings a game contains determines whether a disabled player is going to be able to play certain video games, and the earlier that information is known, the sooner a disabled player knows if they should get excited to play a game too, or be aware that a game isn’t going to be playable by them.
The video game industry needs to standardise announcing accessibility settings ahead of release, and not holding that information back until the last moment before a game’s on sale.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was perhaps 2023’s best example of this, announcing its accessibility settings the same day the game was announced, seven months prior to release.
Accessible Packaging
Another quick and simple one, one of the best things about receiving the Xbox Series X for review a few years back, for me, was seeing the steps that Xbox had taken towards making the console’s packaging more accessible to more people. From large stickers on the box featuring an unsealed edge tab for more easy gripping, to a minimising of things like twist ties used inside the box, thoughtfulness in packaging design went a long way to making the new generation Xbox console more approachable.
In 2023, the PlayStation Access Controller followed a lot of the same accessible packaging standards seen with the Xbox Series packaging, a great sign that both console makers clearly do understand how accessible packaging is designed, at least in theory.
This kind of accessibility considerate design philosophy is important, and should really be an industry standard. We need to see Xbox and PlayStation start applying these principles outside of the narrow scope of accessibility focused hardware packaging, and Nintendo needs to show an awareness of these principles in general.
Colourblind Support
I talked about this four years ago in my very first accessibility focused video, but it bears repeating. We know that there are a handful of common types of colourblindness. It’s not that hard to check whether your game is accessible to players who are colourblind, and either tweak your core visual design, or creat settings options that apply different colours to certain elements, so that you can then check if the new design is friendly to colourblind users.
Controller Remapping
Another quick and overdue suggestion, every video game should at this point be allowing players to customise their controls, and remap which buttons control which functions in a game. We’re thankfully in an age where most video game consoles have system level button remapping, but per game remapping options are still important for cases where a singular game requires its own unique remap to be accessible, or for players whose remapping needs vary on a game by game basis. This should really be a standard by now.
Accessibility on First Boot
Another aspect of game design I’ve talked about a lot on this show, that is thankfully becoming more common, we should in a perfect world be expecting video games to make their accessibility settings options easily available to players on the first boot up of a game.
A past example of this done right was God of War: Ragnarok, which allowed players to either go through a guided accessibility settings walkthrough on first boot, or skip past it to the game’s main menu. Then, there was a settings menu, and accessibility menu, on the main menu screen before getting into any gameplay.
Titles where gameplay starts before you’ve had a chance to set up your settings are thankfully becoming fewer and further between, but this should be an expected standard by this point, and something we expect to become consistent across the industry.
Accessibility Presets
Continuing to discuss God of War: Ragnarok as an example for a moment, another thing that game did amazingly was its implementation of degrees of preset for accessibility settings, tailored to a selection of common categories of disability.
Players could easily set some, or all, available settings that were in the game, and likely to be helpful for their category of disability, to be activated with a few button clicks, avoiding a lot of digging through menus manually.
This kind of thoughtful grouping of settings into degrees of useful presets is the kind of streamlined onboarding the games industry should aspire to, and something I hope becomes a standard in the near future.
Audio Description
While I generally try and keep this annual list focused on accessibility settings I feel are either long overdue becoming standardised, or on the precipice of that shift, I want to take some time this year to be a little more optimistic and forward thinking, and suggest that audio descriptions, at the very least for static prerendered cutscenes, should become a standard in the video game industry, and are a feature that is finally starting to gain some momentum.
Ubisoft made their 2023 summer showcase press conference available live with audio described trailers. PlayStation will by early 2024 have three first party games on sale which support the feature (The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 Remake and Spider-Man 2), and indie games such as Brok the InvestiGator in 2023 patched in support for the feature in a post launch update. Forza Motorsport on Xbox supported the feature too, albeit in a very limited fashion.
Audio Descriptions are more difficult to incorporate into gameplay in some genres compared to others, but they are starting to become more common in scenes where pacing and on screen information are predictable, and that’s a great step on the road towards another future industry standard I hope we one day reach.
While this list of accessibility settings standards is far from exhaustive, I think that it covers many of the accessibility settings right now that would make the most immediate impact if made into industry standards, while focusing on settings that seem to either be heading toward natural standardisation already, or that I suspect will explode in popularity as developers have time to implement them in projects that started development after their well received debuts in other recent titles.
The video game industry, while constantly becoming more accessible year by year, is inconsistent, and even games from the same publisher or development studio can’t always be relied on to be consistent. I think that the next major step for our industry in terms of accessibility will be standardisation, and that it is a needed step for this industry to grow and mature.
Disabled gamers deserve to be able to pick up a video game, confident that it will meet a baseline level of accessibility, and I think many of the ideas discussed in this video are promising candidates for that eventual standardised future.