The great games accessibility thread!

[SWard]

Hey folks,

Accessibility is so important for video games. From options to adjust colours, hardness, text size, speed, localisation or special controller technology more and more game developers, hardware suppliers and publishers are ensuring that their games have good accessibility options.

If you find any games that have awesome accessibility options, or developers that do wonderful work with accessibility projects call them out here! We'd love to hear from you and see what they have been up to.

The PCGamer Community Team

 

[beckyfr0st]

Hi everyone!
Whether you're a player or developer, you might be interested in SpecialEffect, the gamers' charity! We make and modify equipment so that people with severe physical disabilities can enjoy the world of video games and access the fun, inclusion and therapy that gaming offers We also work with developers to advise on accessibility options and were one of the charities that Microsoft worked with to create the Xbox Adaptive Controller! If you have any questions at all please do get in touch!
www.specialeffect.org.uk to find out more.

 

[Ianhamilton_]

Another accessibilityer here, lovely to see PC Gamer's enthusiasm for inclusion!

 

[Ianhamilton_]

Lots of nice examples here of the progress made over the past year -

View: https://youtu.be/vi98rAn4uXE

 

[AlyxTrace]

As much as im no longer a fan of Fortnite (its building mechanic is too difficult to keep up with my dexterity) it does have one of the best accesibility features for deaf people in a shooter ive seen so far, in games like CS or Apex you have 3D indicators to tell you where your being shot which is great if your half deaf and be shot on your deaf side (well better than some games that give you hardly any indication in the name of realism) however Fortnite trumps these by having a hearing-impaired mode that basically makes all the game sounds mono and provides a HUD to help you locate anything from footsteps to loot, a great feature because not only does it allow deaf people to play at an equal footing, but it discourages people from abusing it by making your sound mono (which obviously for deaf people usually isnt a problem)

See below for an exampe of the HUD

 

[Ianhamilton_]

They've put some nice ongoing work into it too. When it launched it muted the sound completely, which wasn't great for people with partial hearing loss.. the shift to mono instead was the result of a fair bit of research to get the balance right between accessibility and competitive advantage.

 

[AlyxTrace]

They've put some nice ongoing work into it too. When it launched it muted the sound completely, which wasn't great for people with partial hearing loss.. the shift to mono instead was the result of a fair bit of research to get the balance right between accessibility and competitive advantage.

Aye i hated it when it was muted cause im only partially deaf (complete left ear) and so it seemed a completely useless adition but now i wish more games used it if only in its mono incarnation