Accessibility should lead design decisions.
I know some of you out there rage-quit a game, not because it was hard, but because of how annoying the menu was. Safe to say, accessibility matters.
Usually, when we talk about design, people think of the cute colors, the cinematic lighting, and the soundtracks of games. Oftentimes, most people forget that accessibility is like that quiet hero of design whose purpose is to make sure everyone deserves to play. It removes heavy barriers between the gamer and the game.
Players can tell when there’s good accessibility design versus terrible. When it’s good…you actually don’t even notice it; that’s the magic of good accessibility. People can tell the difference when everything flows smoothly. Behind a good accessibility design was a designer who kept important questions in mind. Like “What if the player has trouble hearing?” or “What if the color makes the screen hard to look at?”. This, my friends, is what we call empathy in action.
Games like The Last of Us Part || and Forza Horizon 5 flipped the entire script on the accessibility conversation. Offering text-to-speech options to visual contrast settings and adaptive controllers, players felt included in ways so many games could never even dream of. They tend to forget that inclusivity is what elevates gameplay, not water it down.
Accessibility is a group of three besties: User Experience, empathy, and creativity. They make sure that they’re not designing for players, but designing with them in mind. Designers know that when a game has more players, it’s not just about them experiencing the game anymore. It’s about making the game resonate on a deeper level.
So yeah, accessibility isn’t just a feature. It’s the future. If a game’s UI needs a tutorial to access the tutorial, we need to talk.
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