Ubisoft published Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood in 2010, an action-adventure game in which players navigate a vivid open environment using stealth and parkour. It was one of the most popular games of the year, but it only had two accessibility features: the ability to alter the control scheme and the ability to turn on subtitles.
In the 10 years that followed, the landscape of game accessibility changed dramatically. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, released in 2020, has more than 30 accessibility options, including closed captions and subtitles with adjustable sizes, backgrounds, and the option to display speaker names. There are options for text to speech, colorblind modes, alternative inputs, aim assistance, and multiple difficulty settings. The game is still far from perfectly accessible, but the evolution of the series points to growing investment in accessibility across the game industry over recent years.
The subtitles were an improvement — the first game in the series didn’t have any at all — but they didn’t have labels to show which character was speaking, making it difficult for players to follow conversations if they couldn’t hear the audio. There were no options specifically designed for people with vision, motor, or cognitive disabilities. For these players, Brotherhood, like many games of its time, fell on a spectrum from frustrating to completely unplayable.
“It’s been a slow climb up to this point,” says Steve Saylor, a blind game accessibility advocate. “But as the momentum has kind of grown, it just keeps getting faster and faster.”
The shift toward accessibility is particularly tangible in games. The increased visibility of disability advocates and consultants across the internet, along with developments in tech and industry guidelines, has led to more focus on making games that are accessible to a wider range of people. “The amount of information you can get out there to help developers be aware of what changes they need to make, or what things to implement, is really, I think, more prevalent than it was 10 years ago,” says Kyle Abbate, a game accessibility advocate.
Accessibility has gradually become more of a priority across the tech industry. Phones, tablets, and computers come with a range of features built-in, from screen readers to support for different input options. Streaming platforms are slowly adding audio descriptions to more movies and shows. Social sites more often give users the ability to add alt text or captions to their content, and more people are learning to use them.
Many players and developers credit Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II for raising the bar of what’s possible — and expected — in new games. The game, released in 2020, includes over 60 accessibility settings, as well as presets for players with vision, hearing, and motor disabilities. Other recent blockbuster games, like Insomniac’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, have been recognized for their wide-ranging accessibility features. Indie studios and developers are also upping the ante, with games like Severed Steel and HyperDot being influenced by research about and feedback from disabled players.
But there’s still work to do. Plenty of games barely meet the minimum of accessibility options, and even those that exceed expectations have room for improvement. A more inclusive future is emerging in games — if the people making them care to reach for it.
“Even with The Last of Us Part II coming out with the amazing amount of accessibility that’s there, that doesn’t mean that it’s the end of accessibility,’’ says Saylor. “It just means it’s the end of the beginning.” More of the features that already exist
I asked people for their biggest dreams about the future of games: new gadgets, augmented reality, brain implants. But most of them pointed to fairly simple solutions that they want to see more of, rather than tech possibilities straight out of science fiction. “The future of gaming, for me, is going to be a number of features that have already been slowly developing over the years,” says Ben Bayliss, editor in chief of Can I Play That. As much as accessibility options have expanded, many games are still missing basic features like consistent captions or customizable controls. “It’s not really like I wish games would do ‘X’ thing; I just think that there needs to be more consistency,” says Abbate. He relies on the ability to remap controls in games, but sometimes even games that enable remapping have certain keys that can’t be changed. “You assume every game has remappable keybinds — it’s 2021, they should,” he says, “but you’d be surprised.”
Abbate compares basic settings like control remapping to ramps for wheelchair users. “Just to get me into the game, that should be there,” he says. “Some games are still missing the ramp.” GAMES STILL MISS VITAL FEATURES, LIKE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE THE SIZE OF TEXT
Saylor uses a number of options — rescaled UI, subtitles, increased text size, screen magnification, high contrast modes, text to speech, menu narration — when they’re available. But he says that even though games increasingly have at least some features, like subtitles, they’re often missing other vital features, like the ability to change the size of text. Those features are also lacking at the console level. Several console systems have “amazing options to navigate the system itself, but they don’t really tap into the games themselves,” says Saylor. “I would love to be able to see that meshed together.”
Players also want more games to have options like assist modes, invincibility options, or adjustable difficulty levels. Hades, Celeste, and Control have compelling assist modes, some of which were added after launch in response to player feedback, but some developers (and fans) have been reluctant to sacrifice the difficulty that, for them, is a major part of a game’s appeal. Games like Dark Souls, celebrated for being notoriously punishing, create a high barrier to entry for disabled players. “I want to be able to play Souls-like type games and be able to complete those and customize the experience,” says Abbate.
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