Cultivating an inclusive video game industry is about more than race and gender. This also includes accessibility and work focused on removing barriers for the 400 million gamers with disabilities worldwide.
On Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Xbox a d new updates and accessibility features for gamers. It’s all part of Xbox’s mission to support gamers with disabilities and to highlight the importance of digital access and inclusion.
Among the announcements, the following stand out:
- Firmware updates for the Xbox Adaptive Controller . They include the ability to increase size and add tooltips over button images on the controller remapping screen.
- The ability to search and filter Accessibility feature labels of games in the Xbox store. Accessibility feature labels, announced last fall, are designed to make it easier for gamers with disabilities to know if a game is right for them. There are 20 tags in total, based on extensive user research and discussions with our community of gamers with disabilities. With this new update, players will be able to search and filter tags from over 400 titles.
- The recent launch of the channel Twitch Xbox ASL . Every day, the Xbox Plays team streams the Xbox Twitch Channel playing the latest and greatest titles from the Xbox universe. In April, they launched an ASL (American Sign Language) Twitch channel including interpretation for about 25 hours of streaming per week.
- The recent release of “BuildAbility” in Minecraft: Education Edition. In May, M:EE launched a world of accessibility in collaboration with the PEEL school. In it, students can understand, identify, and work to remove barriers to accessibility in their school and community…all within the Minecraft universe.
- Update of the Xbox accessibility guidelines (XAG) 3.0 with mental health information. Based on community and developer feedback, the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAG) 3.0 update, released in May, includes a new mental health guideline, as well as information on motion sickness and additional details on text size.
Access all information here.
I’ve traveled to worlds you’d never believe, ended up with enemies that elude all mysticism. I felt my pulse quicken with each battle, and the sigh of someone who knows they will have to get back up. There’s always a villain waiting and an adventure just around the corner.
