2025 has been an eventful year for the standardisation of accessibility store tags across platforms and by game developers. At GDC ealier this year we got the news that a number of game publishers were coming together to form the Accessible Gaming Initiative in order to standardise language around common accessibility store tags, and then a few weeks later we got the news that Valve was implementing an accessibility store tags system of their own on the PC digital game storefront Steam.
Valve’s system did get some flack at the time of its announcement for not standardising its language to match that of the recently announced Accessible Gaming Initiative, but the move was still undeniably a hugely positive step forward for video game accessibility, moving us forward by adding support for this vital feature to one of the largest digital game storefronts in the world.
For those unaware, accessibility tags are a way for game developers to tag their games, so that disabled players can see at the point of purchase whether a game has a number of common accessibility features that they might need to be able to play games, without needing to look up external accessibility focused game reviews to learn that information. The feature is currently supported on both Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles.
When Valve’s accessibility store tag system was initially announced, it was revealed that game developers could optionally answer a series of questions about their game, with explanations provided to help developers know whether or not they should self apply an accessibility store tag to their game or not. The feature wasn’t public facing at the time of its announcement, with developers able to tag games in the developer backend but those tags not yet being visible to players.
This past week Valve quietly added the ability for players browsing Steam to sort their results by 16 different accessibility tags found in a drop down menu. The new feature wasn’t loudly publicised, but it is now live seemingly globally for disabled gamers to experiment with.
So, how does it work in practice? Pretty well, with a couple of limitations.
Within the “Narrow By Accessibility Feature” dropdown, players can find the following settings. Under Gameplay, players can filter by Adjustable Difficulty and Save Anytime. Under Visual, players can filter by Adjustable Text Size, Subtitle Options, Colour Alternatives, and Camera Comfort. Under audio players can filter by Custom Volume Controls, Stereo Sound, Surround Sound, and Narrated Game Menus. Lastly, under Input, players can filter games by Playable Without Timed Inputs, Keyboard Only Option, Touch Only Option, Chat Speech to Text, and Chat Text to Speech.
Not to linger on an already discussed criticism, but one of the flaws of Valve’s current implementation of these tags is that the definition of each tag isn’t public facing information, as well as not matching the newly defined standards of the Accessible Gaming Initiative. While developers are given detailed explanations of what it means for a game to receive the “Camera Comfort” tag for example, players can’t hover over that option in Steam for clarity on what receiving the tag means. As a motion sickness prone gamer I have no idea if that tag means that a first person game added a centre screen reticle and called it a day, or if that game supports disabling head bob, altering my field of view size, and disabling scenes where camera control is automated by the game. There are wildly varying degrees of motion sickness support out there in different games, and I don’t know as a player how strict Valve is being in its advice to developers about if they should apply the tag to their game or not.
Beyond that, the feature isn’t being highlighted to disabled players who aren’t actively looking to find it. Both Xbox and PlayStation upon first introducing the feature to their digital storefronts put out press releases to get the news out, but also implemented sections on their digital storefront homepages advertising particularly accessible video games that had received numerous accessibility tags as part of the initial voluntary rollout. This helped to make sure that players who would benefit from this information were encouraged to make use of the feature, and knew that it existed.
Even as someone who was actively looking for these filters I took a little time to find them, as initially I attempted to find a way to access these filters on the Steam homepage, before realising that the only way to see them is seemingly to manually search for a genre or similar tag in the search bar, then filter the results that are shown for that specific search.
You can’t for example go to the current Steam Demo Fest that’s going on and search that by accessibility tags, you have to be making a dedicated search to use these filters.
While I believe these are valid complaints, and things I’d love to see addressed with a wave of deliberate promotion of the tags addition to the store and a way to use these filters on main store page sections such as the new and noteworthy section which I make a lot of use of, I do think overall the addition of these tags is a really positive step forward for both Valve and the wider gaming industry.
Do I wish there was more transparency about what it meant for a game to receive a Steam accessibility tag? Sure. Do I wish that there was some standardisation in those meanings alongside other companies’ tags? Yes. But at the end of the day I can now at a glance see more easily if a game that I plan to play has in theory attempted to make itself more accessible to me as someone with chronic motion sickness for example, or if I can save at any time as someone with ADHD who sometimes skitters between different titles erratically seeking the dopamine. These features are a great step forward, even if they’re not perfect in their execution right now.
I’m glad to see Valve implementing these accessibility store tags on Steam, and would love to see the Epic Games Store or Nintendo’s Switch 2 eShop do the same in the coming months to help improve standardisation of this feature across the industry. This is a step in the right direction for video game accessibility, even if there are tweaks that it’s reasonable to hope for with regards to the specifics of that progress.