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2024 is finally coming to a close, and as is tradition here on this channel we’re taking some time in December to look back on everything that happened in video game accessibility this past year.
It’s a classic end of year recap, aiming to catch you up on a year’s worth of developments in the video game accessibility space in a pretty short amount of time.
While I’m making an effort to highlight as many moments and games as I can in this video, there will undoubtedly be things that I miss. The video game accessibility space is growing every year, and living with ADHD I might simply have forgotten something that’s awesome and happened this year due to having kinda funky brain chemistry.
If I missed something awesome and accessible, that’s great. Let me know down in the comments, I want to know about stuff that I either missed or forgot because my brain doesn’t always work.
So here’s a look back on 2024 in video game accessibility, largely organised chronologically, except for stuff that I added at the end because I’m not super organised.
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered – Audio Descriptions Added to Cinematics
When The Last of Us: Part 2 was originally released on PlayStation 4 in the summer of 2020, it was with good reason heralded as a major step forward for accessibility in the video game industry. With a huge range of best practice settings offered, accessibility presets for common disability categories, the first mainstream use of high contrast mode visuals, and a suite of tools designed to facilitate sightless blind player accessibility, the game marked a notable turning point for accessibility discussions in the big budget video game industry.
While remastering a less than four year old game and charging players for a visual upgrade may have rubbed some players the wrong way, the remaster did bring some valuable new accessibility support to the game, adding audio descriptions to select pre-rendered cinematics.
While the Last of Us: Part 2 had always been playable by sightless blind players, many aspects of the plot were difficult to follow due to a lack of descriptions of visual elements outside of cutscene dialogue. With this new feature addition, a game previously heralded for its accessibility took another step forward, showing that even a game used as a comparison for overall industry accessibility could still benefit from accessibility updates post launch.
Tekken 8 Adds High Contrast Mode Support, and Tries to Rectify a Photosensitivity Concern Prior to Release
A few weeks prior to the release of Tekken 8, a demo for the game was made available on consoles, allowing players to explore a promising looking suite of accessibility features. These features included enhanced audio to support blind players using audio cues to fight, and Bandai Namco’s first instance of high contrast mode visuals in one of their published titles.
However, the demo also featured a visual mode labelled as being designed to help colourblind players more easily recognise characters on screen.
This mode replaced characters with static vertical or horizontal lines, which were revealed by the moving outlines of characters during combat. These posed a major risk to health and safety for photosensitive players, including those with photosensitive epilepsy.
While initially the game’s developers seemed not to understand the complaints being made about the mode, they did course correct before the game fully released, patching both the game and demo to replace this with a more subtle visual less likely to cause issues due to visual strobing.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Supports High Contrast Mode Visuals, and Screenshot Pinning to Maps for Cognitive Accessibility
Adding yet another game to 2024’s list of studios and publishers implementing high contrast mode visuals in their games for the first time, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown marked Ubisoft’s first published game to support the feature at launch.
The game, a side-scrolling metroidvania, had its accessibility settings detailed seven months in advance of release during Summer Games Fest 2023. Every feature announced the prior summer made it into the released version of the game.
Perhaps most notably, The Lost Crown offered players the ability to take screenshots and pin them to their in game map. As a gamer with aphantasia, a condition which limits visual imagination and memory, I found this incredibly useful and novel as an accessibility feature, as it helped hugely in being able to identify past locations that I needed to backtrack to with greater ease while playing.
Jedi Survivor Adds High Contrast Mode in a Post Launch Update
I know it feels like basically every news story in the 2024 wrap up so far has discussed high contrast mode visuals, and that is something that should be taken note of. Early 2024 was around four years after the initial release of The Last of Us: Part 2, just long enough for many major AAA games to go through a development cycle and implement a newly popularised accessibility feature.
Early 2024 really did feel like a turning point for overall industry adoption of the feature. I speculated at the time that we might see more studios throughout the year attempt to add the feature to their games for the first time, and that turned out to be fairly accurate.
In January 2024, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor added high contrast mode visuals to their game as part of a post launch patch, alongside other accessibility features including a new audio ping system, making it easier for sightless and low vision players to locate objects and interactables via audio.
PlayStation 5 Blocks Chronus Zen
The Chronus Zen is a device predominantly designed to allow for cheating in console games.
Players were using it in games like Call of Duty to modify their inputs, allowing for features such as automatically adjusting for recoil after shots and allowing for faster shooting.
However, the device was also used by a number of disabled gamers to connect non standard controllers to their PS5, such as players who found the Xbox Adaptive Controller a better fit for their needs than the PlayStation Access Controller, or those with existing custom accessibility controllers for the PS4 that they didn’t want to lose access to.
While blocking access to the Chronus Zen on PS5 may have been necessary to prevent cheating in online games, it had unintentional negative effects on many disabled gamers, and prompted a wider industry discussion of how we might balance supporting unofficial controllers, while blocking access to the devices that facilitate their use.
Laura Starts an Interview Series on Access-Ability
A bit of a personal update here, but in early 2024 I began conducting interviews with other experts in the accessibility space, as part of Access-Ability. This included interviews with Arevya about gaming with PTSD, Jeppe Newman discussing the risks of working as a consultant with photosensitive epilepsy, and Geoffrey Bunting discussing gaming as a chronic migraine sufferer.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 adds Accessibility Including Audio Descriptions in a Post Launch Patch
Nearly four months after the game’s initial release, Spider-Man 2 received an accessibility patch that, alongside more standard feature additions such as in-game button remapping, added some more major features such as cinematic audio descriptions to in-game cutscenes.
At this point, PlayStation seems to be working toward making audio described cinematics somewhat of a standardised feature for their AAA story focused games going forward. The feature is still specifically utilised only in specific cutscenes, rather than attempting an implementation that offers audio descriptions during gameplay too, but adoption of the feature is at least starting to become more common in this cinematic focused form.
Logitech Adaptive Gaming Kit for Access Controller
The original Logitech Adaptive Gaming Kit was a series of affordable buttons and input switches designed as an approachable starter collection for Xbox Adaptive Controller users seeking 3.5MM input devices for their accessibility controller.
The Adaptive Gaming Kit for Access Controller was essentially an identical collection of 3.5mm inputs, with a set of button labelling stickers designed to mirror the inputs on a PlayStation 5 controller rather than reflecting Xbox button icons.
The kit was slightly cheaper than its Xbox equivalent, due to containing slightly fewer buttons in the box. This is likely because a pair of PlayStation Access Controllers features eight 3.5mm input ports compared to the Xbox Adaptive Controller’s 20 ports. A couple of button types had the number of duplicates included in the box reduced so that the kit wouldn’t offer more buttons than there were available ports on PlayStation’s accessibility focused device.
Botany Manor Supports Well Labelled Motion Sickness Settings
A caveat about this one in advance, during the 2023 Access-Ability Summer Showcase I highlighted Botany Manor as an upcoming release with promising looking accessibility support options. As a game that I selected for promotion, it is important that I not obscure that context.
Botany Manor is a first person puzzle game about exploring a grand manor home, and learning how to properly care for and cultivate a number of plant species, while documenting your findings for later publication.
Among other accessibility options, the game featured a robust suite of motion sickness mitigating accessibility settings which were perhaps most notable for how they were communicated to the player.
Where many video games featuring motion sickness mitigation settings require players to already know that Field of View impacts motion sickness, and specifically that a wider field of view will help mitigate illness, Botany Manor made an effort to explain which settings would specifically help with motion sickness, AND whether to try increasing or decreasing the given setting to help mitigate nausea.
Given the game’s first person nature and focus on backtracking to check clues, these clearly labelled motion sickness settings were both useful, and notably well signposted to players.
Another Crab’s Treasure as an Accessible Soulslike
Another Crab’s Treasure is a colourful cartoony soulslike game, where you play as a hermit crab whose shell home has been repossessed. What begins as a quest to regain a comfortable home sheltered away from the struggles of the rest of the ocean spirals into a fight against pollution and political apathy, via fighting corrupted evil undersea boss monsters.
Another Crab’s Treasure is a fantastic blueprint for how a Dark Souls inspired video game can be made more mechanically accessible, while still offering challenge to players.
The game offered options ranging from slowing down game speed, to increasing player health, increasing shell durability, and increasing the timing window for successful dodges and parries.
Also, if there was a hard progression barrier that was simply going to prevent getting any further in the game, you could simply give your tiny hermit crab a huge handgun with unlimited ammo, capable of one hit killing any enemy in the game, bosses included.
Another Crab’s Treasure acted as a wonderful example, akin to something like 2D platformer Celeste, that showed customisable modifiers can go a long way to making challenging games more accessible, without erasing their intended challenge experience.
Ctrl, Alt, Access Starts Airing
Another little bit of self promo, in the summer of 2024 myself and Arevya, an accessibility consultant and Twitch streamer, began a twice monthly video game accessibility podcast / video series called Ctrl, Alt, Access.
I’d worked with Arevya a number of times in the past, such as interviewing her for a previous video about video game accessibility and PTSD, and had found her insightful and easy to socialise with every time we spoke. I jumped on the opportunity to work on a regular project with her.
Each episode starts with discussion of our recently played games and their accessibility support, followed by discussions of gaming accessibility news stories and updates.
This was far from my last time working with Arevya in 2024, a few months later we began working together as part of Accessibility consultation agency Easy Surf, but this was a wonderful place to begin.
Pine Hearts Accessibility
Another game I need to preface with a caveat, Pine Hearts was another of the video games I highlighted back at the Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2023, with the game later releasing in 2024.
Pine Hearts is a game in which you play as a small bean shaped person on a journey to climb a mountain, in an attempt to feel close to an absent parent.
The game featured, among other accessibility options, support for high contrast mode visuals, support for simplified inputs, and a really approachable accessibility onboarding flow on first boot of the game, as well as accessible design considerations around how puzzles are communicated to the player.
Hellblade 2’s Subtitles Convey Spatial Auditory Hallucinations
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is an incredibly impressive video game for a lot of reasons, but in terms of accessibility perhaps the most notable thing worth discussing is the way that the game handles subtitles that by necessity must overlap each other.
The game follows Senua, a young woman living with both auditory and visual hallucinations. Where the first game in the series had taken place mostly in her own internal world, the new sequel sees players experience the physical world, overlaid with her experiences of pattern recognition and internally experienced sensations.
Senua spends much of the game hearing voices in her head, seeming to come from multiple different locations around her. For players with binaural hearing, wearing headphones, this is conveyed by having voices spatially positioned, so that the player can hear voices whispering in your ears, sometimes overlapping each other as they fight to be heard over Seuna’s stronger internal monologue, or other external speakers.
One of the most interesting innovations seen in Senua’s Saga compared to its predecessor is the presentation of subtitles. Subtitles can now appear in multiple positions within the subtitle area, with Seuna’s internal monologue and dialogue from external speakers taking a central position, and whispered hallucinatory voices on a separate higher up line of text. There are three upper positions for text to appear in, meaning that up to three voices can be whispering at a time, with the text’s position from left, to centre, to right representing where in 3D space the hallucinated audio is being heard.
This system, and the way that it allows Senua’s hallucinatory audio to overlap itself and surround the player even without hearing audio, was a hugely impressive step forward for the series.
Additionally, I highly appreciate that the game featured a documentary, showcasing that consultants who experience psychosis were brought onto the project to share their experiences with the development team, to ensure that Senua’s experience was authentic and not sensationalised.
The Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2024
The second annual Access-Ability Summer Showcase aired in June 2024, and once again featured trailers for upcoming accessibility focused video games, alongside testimonials from disabled gamers and accessibility consultants about what Accessibility means to them.
The showcase was aired with American Sisn Language, British Sign Language, and Audio Described versions, with this year’s Audio Descriptions narrated by SightlessKombat.
The 2024 showcase was also paired with a Steam event page, allowing gamers to find all the games from this year’s showcase in one place, categorised by disability categories they were aiming to be accessible for.
Those Who Passed Away
2024 was an emotionally rough year for many in the gaming accessibility space. Among some pretty big upheavals in the industry, this year also saw a number of notable accessibility advocates and consultants unfortunately pass away in quick succession during the summer.
Particularly of note, both Milan Patel and Brandon Cole passed away only a few weeks separated from each other.
Both Milan and Brandon were talented accessibility consultants that I’d had the honour to work alongside briefly as part of Easy Surf, and their passings were both a blow to the industry, and to those who had the ability to know them.
With regards to Brandon, there was a recent panel as part of GA Conf USA 2024 where several blind gamers and accessibility advocates discussed his impact on the industry, a panel that I highly recommend checking out for those unfamiliar with Brandon’s prior work.
Milan and Brandon will both be dearly missed. It’s still hard to process the fact that they both left us so suddenly. I hope their legacy will be carried forward by others in the industry today.
Accessibility Accommodations for Non Disabled Gamers, and Situational Disabilities
Prompted by pushback to a very innocuous initial video, the summer of 2024 saw a lot of discussion pop up surrounding the idea of Situational Disabilities, an often misunderstood term used to highlight temporary situations that, while not equivalent to disabilities, mimic the accommodation needs of disabled users.
Put simply, the idea is that while accessibility accommodations should first and foremost be designed with disabled users needs in mind, if you’re also aware of other potential use cases for accessibility accommodations, that might help you to design those accommodations in ways that help users outside the primary demographic, without negatively impacting support for core users.
If you’re designing a game to be playable one handed, that helps people with a permanent disability such as those who have had one hand amputated, those with a temporary disability such as those with broken finger bones in a cast, and it helps those with “situational” needs, such as a parent holding a baby in one arm at 3am rocking them to sleep, trying to game to stay awake or pass the time.
While the discussion splintered a lot, there was a worthwhile discussion to be had. When designing accessibility accommodations, keeping in mind other demographics who might benefit can either help consider ways to broaden feature applicability, or simply make it easier to pitch to an executive that the feature is worth keeping in the development pipeline because more people than they expect might use it.
Working With Easy Surf
Another little bit of self promo, but in the summer of 2024 I began working with Easy Surf, a company that finds accessibility consulting projects and pairs them with consultants for playtesting sessions, before compiling their feedback into reports for studios.
While much of the work we’ve done is behind closed doors, you can read the report we provided to the developers of Cabernet earlier this year for an insight into our work, and you can watch a talk from GA Conf USA 2024 for insights into our consulting work on Mystiques.
The Overjoyed Accessibility Controller
Released in the Summer of 2024, the Overjoyed Accessibility Controller is a smartphone app which allows users to create a custom controller interface out of repositionable inputs on a touchscreen.
The app, which can be used to emulate a controller on PC, can also be used with certain game consoles by using a controller such as the 8BitDo Micro as an intermediary to connect the app to the console.
Concord, Despite its Short Life, Featured Interesting Accessibility
Concord’s release in August 2024 is a rather unfortunate tale. A live service multiplayer hero shooter, the game failed to find an audience of players at launch, and was shut down after just three weeks on sale.
Given that Concord was a first party published PlayStation Studios release, seeing the game pulled from sale so quickly was truly shocking.
One of the biggest disappointments of the whole situation was that the game featured some interesting accessibility settings not often seen in other online multiplayer shooters. Most notably, the game offered high contrast character outlines for both the player and enemy team, helping to improve at a glance visual and cognitive accessibility for the title.
A vast majority of online multiplayer shooters shy away from supporting these kinds of accessibility options in multiplayer gameplay. Call of Duty for example introduced High Contrast mode support for the first time in 2023, but only supported the setting in their single player campaign, not supporting it in multiplayer matches.
It shouldn’t be a rarity, but Concord supporting high contrast outlines made it an outlier in its genre, and it’s a shame that it was removed from sale so close to release.
Gamescom Committed to Increased Event Accessibility
Back in 2023, Xbox took a number of steps to improve the accessibility of their booth on the show floor at Gamescom, Europe’s largest video game press and public facing gaming event.
In the year that followed, Xbox released the Playbook for Accessible Gaming Events, a document outlining steps gaming events could take to be more broadly accessible for disabled gamers.
It seems like Gamescom’s organisers may have taken notice, as prior to Gamescom 2024 the event organisers announced a series of steps they would be taking to improve accessibility at the week long convention, including mandating several aspects of accessibility to exhibitors and their show floor booths.
These included ensuring that stands all featured step free access, no greater than a 10% incline on any slopes, and guidance on when hand rails were required for safety.
Additionally, they made recommendations including having seating available, making accessibility controllers available at demo stations, having adjustable height desks, and more.
World of Warcraft Motion Ride Made Wheelchair Accessible
Another story from Gamescom 2024, as part of the Xbox booth at the show, Blizzard set up a motion simulator VR experience themed around an at the time upcoming World of Warcraft expansion.
The simulator involved participants riding on the back of a virtual winged beast, flying through a battlefield, as wind effects blasted from fans, and the platform tilted to simulate movement.
While most booths for the simulator required being able to climb onto a simulated mount and maintain your own balance, there were also demo stations set up where wheelchair users could ride the simulator while sat in their own wheelchairs, on specially adapted motion platforms.
Xbox Adaptive Joystick Announced
Continuing the Xbox and Gamescom combo news stories, during Gamescom 2024 we saw the announcement of the Xbox Adaptive Joystick, a wired controller similar in form factor to a Wii Nunchuck, featuring an analogue stick, four face buttons, a bumper and trigger.
The device, which can be used directly connected to a PC or Xbox, or via an Adaptive Controller, aims to be an affordable one handed controller solution, able to be used as part of accessible gaming setups.
The device will retail in early 2025 for $29.99 USD.
8BitDo Lite SE for Xbox Announced
The last of our batch of Xbox at Gamescom announcements, we also saw the reveal at the show of the 8BitDo Lite SE for Xbox.
While this accessibility controller shares a name with a similar controller for Nintendo Switch, the Xbox version features a couple of notable differences.
Much like the Lite SE for Switch, this controller is a flat controller with low resistance buttons for all controller inputs placed on its top face, and a rubberised underside to avoid moving around during play.
Where the Xbox version differs is that the base controller is noticeably larger than the Switch version. Additionally, the Xbox version features two 3.5mm input ports, and the package ships with two large external buttons which can be used in those ports.
The “Sorta” Rollout of the Proteus Accessibility Controller
This is the last of our Gamescom related stories, in that it at least begins at the show.
The Proteus Accessibility Controller, first announced back in 2023, is a modular accessibility controller made out of a series of interlocking cubes and circular input faces. Players can assemble the cubes in whichever configuration they like, forming a custom controller whose basic shape and button layout meet their needs.
The controller, while on the more expensive end, showed a lot of promise as a truly customisable kit for the end user.
While announced for an October release when preorders went live in early summer 2024, some early units were made available for sale at Gamescom 2024 without prior warning.
I picked up one of these early Gamescom units, and felt that the overall concept showed a lot of promise, but was disappointed by the number of tech issues that I experienced given the nearly £300 price point.
The early Gamescom units of the Proteus Controller were discovered to have a hardware defect which couldn’t be fixed via a software update, impacting their ability to switch on with certain component configurations, unless connected to a charger.
Those with Gamescom units were allowed to keep these early units, which did work using workarounds, and were offered free replacement units when the main retail units shipped later in the year, without needing to return their defective ones. This allowed those who had them to continue using them until replacements arrived, as well as having extra components to work with upon release.
Additionally, creators Byowave announced plans to allow for purchasing a second USB Dongle, allowing for split handed control setups via Co-Pilot mode on Xbox and PC.
While the Proteus Controller was planned to ship in October, I’m writing this recap script in early December and have not yet received my finalised retail unit of the controller, though I have been assured it is due to ship soon.
I will likely have a review of the Proteus Controller on this channel in early 2025 at this point.
Astro Bot Accessibility Improvements over Astro’s Playroom
Astro’s Playroom, a free pack in title installed on every PlayStation 5, was a short but sweet 3D platformer about playing as a little robot finding their missing robot friends, and exploring worlds inspired by the components inside a PS5 console.
Astro’s Playroom was designed as a showcase for PlayStation 5 DualSense controller features, and as such made heavy use of high fidelity rumble, the controller’s resistive triggers, motion controls, the controller microphone, and touch pad inputs.
Unfortunately, from an accessibility perspective, some of these inaccessible input methods were mandatory in Astro’s Playroom, such as needing to use the touchpad to zip up the back of a costume or to roll a ball through certain stages.
Astro Bot released in September 2024, and was an expanded spiritual sucessor to Astro’s Playroom, maintaining much of the controller functionality showcase elements seen in the original short demo.
However, Astro Bot made changes such that none of the controller’s fancy input mechanics were mandatory for game progression. Motion inputs could be replaced with analogue stick inputs, microphone blowing sections can be completed by muting the controller mic, and the game no longer features sections which require touch pad inputs to progress.
As such, while Astro’s Playroom isn’t completable by players using just the Playstation Access accessibility controller, Astro Bot is.
The game was delightful start to finish, and its level of accessibility support improvement was a real positive
I Consulted on Accessibility for Life is Strange: Double Exposure
While I can’t go too much into specifics on this one, I can say that in October of 2024 I got my first major AAA game credit as an accessibility consultant, as part of a team who worked on Life is Strange: Double Exposure, the newest episodic adventure game by Deck Nine.
I can’t be too specific about what involvement I had on the game, but I can say the finished release includes content warnings which can be toggled to pause gameplay before progressing if desired for a number of topics, warnings before bright flashing lights or sudden loud noises, and accessibility options for things like permanent reminders which timeline the player is in, and confirmation prompts before committing to major plot defining choices during the game.
Silent Hill 2 Remake Accessibility
I’ll be honest, when it was announced that Bloober Team, developers of The Medium, were going to be handling the 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2, I wasn’t terribly confident about how the game would turn out. Bloober Team’s prior releases haven’t been terribly impressive in terms of accessibility support, and were even worse in terms of sensitively handling mental health themes in horror.
However, I was pleasantly surprised when, at launch, Silent Hill 2 Remake featured not only a robust and detailed content warnings screen on first boot, but also an accessibility quick start menu, allowing for various tweaks to be added such as support for a centre screen reticle and granular customisable difficulty.
Silent Hill 2 Remake also marked the first time we’ve seen a Konami published or Bloober Team developed title support high contrast mode visuals, yet another step toward standardising the feature across the industry.
Xbox Adaptive Controller Options Increase
In the years since the original release of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, Xbox have done an impressive job of adding additional functionality to their official accessibility controller via software updates.
In terms of updates seen in 2024, the Xbox Adaptive Controller now features support for up to 12 buttons, a bat switch, and two sticks per USB port, an option to toggle button hold functionality via button presses, the ability to map hat switches to analogue stick functionality, the ability to use a pair of flight sticks as a pair of analogue sticks, options for mapping analogue stick directional inputs to activate button presses, and the option to map a joystick or thumbstick to emulate a mouse on PC.
Diablo 4’s Impressive Strides Toward Blind Accessibility
Diablo 4 isn’t a game I’ve followed too closely since its release, but I have done my best to keep an eye on its accessibility updates, as they’ve consistently seemed to focus on making the game more accessible to a wider range of sightless and low vision blind players.
From adding new tools for pathfinding, to new ways to identify items through audio assists, Diablo 4 has had numerous accessibility updates this year focused on increasing blind player accessibility, and that is definitely worthy of praise.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard Accessibility
This is another game I need to give a caveat for, I worked as a “Cultural Consultant” on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I think the game does some really interesting stuff with accessibility, but obviously I am biased in my opinions of the game, so keep that caveat in mind.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard features support for granular difficulty tweaks including a no player death toggle, visual and audio indicators for incoming attacks, motion sickness options, button holds swappable for toggles, no quick time events, no spiders, adjustable timing windows and more.
RNIB Announces Design for Every Gamer Initiative
In early December The Royal National Institute of Blind People, a charity based in the UK, announced the formation of the Design for Every Gamer Player Panel, as well as a new educational resource, the Best Practice in Accessible Gaming 2024 Devkit.
The devkit, alongside the player playtest panel, aim to in combination allow game developers to learn about the accessibility tools available to help make games playable by players with partial through total sight loss, and get feedback on the playability of their titles directly from gamers with sight loss.
Additionally, the RNIB announced Spectrum Shift, a playable video game available as part of the Devkit, which showcases various accessibility features aimed at supporting blind players, so that developers can see features described in the Devkit put into practice in a real world scenario.
EA Continues Their Open Source Software and Patents Pledge
Lastly, as of recording this script on December 9th 2024, publisher Electronic Arts has continued its annual tradition of making a number of their accessibility patents available for use by other developers, and making some of their internal accessibility software available as open source software.
This year’s batch makes 23 patents available for wider industry use, covering topics such as improved speech recognition, generating more personalised automated speech, and simplifying the use of speech recognition technologies.
In terms of open source software offerings, the main headline is that EA has developed a new version of their IRIS photosensitivity trigger detection software, which can now be run as a real time plugin for those developing games in Unreal Engine 5.
While photosensitive consultants are still vital to checking the safety of a video game before release, a tool like IRIS being able to be run in real time in UE5 means that many developers will be able to get real time alerts if something they’ve implemented seems likely to be a risk for the health of photosensitive gamers.
This UE5 Plugin version of IRIS is available now, as an open source program.
And there you have it, most of a year of video game accessibility news updates, squeezed into one video / article.
While there’s every chance there will be a few things from this year I forgot to add to this script draft, this should be the vast majority of notable events seen in the video game accessibility space in the past 12 months.
Access-Ability may be a little quiet on uploads for the remainder of December, as I wrap up 2024 work projects and prepare for 2025, but we will definitely be back in the new year with a look forward to the accessibility standards we hope to see the industry implement in the year ahead.
Thank you so much to this month’s Patreon backers, who help make this show possible.
You can support the show, and everything I do, at Patreon.Com/LauraKBuzz
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