Making Games for All: Accessible Games Initiative Tags Now Available

Today, players with disabilities face fewer barriers in discovering accessible games thanks to the newly launched Accessible Games Initiative (AGI). Brought to life by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and industry leaders like Xbox, Electronic Arts, Google, Nintendo of America, and Ubisoft, the Accessible Games Initiative introduces a set of straightforward “tags” that communicate exactly what accessibility features a game offers before you buy. These tags, which are a continuation of the work Xbox started in 2021 by releasing the Xbox Game Accessibility Feature tags, provide clear, consistent info across platforms, making it simple to find the right fit and empowering players to make informed choices. This cross-platform standard not only supports the more than 429 million players worldwide with disabilities, it also encourages developers to prioritize accessibility from day one.

For developers, adopting the  Accessible Games Initiative tags simplifies the process of communicating accessibility features, aligning efforts across different platforms and storefronts. This standardized approach helps creators ensure their games can reach a broader audience by clearly signaling available accommodations, from text readability and audio enhancements to all manner of input customizations. By eliminating ambiguity around accessibility, developers can better serve diverse player communities while simultaneously ensuring their games are open and playable to the largest possible audience.

Phil Crabtree, Technical Director & Co-founder at Kaizen Game Works, exemplifies the impact a small team can make when embracing accessibility. With their latest release, Promise Mascot Agency, the team implemented numerous accessibility options based on player feedback, such as adjustable fonts and alternative control schemes. In our conversation, Crabtree discusses how integrating Accessible Games Initiative tags has supported their development practices, highlights the community's enthusiastic reception, and explores how accessibility tools and standards can further transform the gaming industry.

It’s been a few months since we last spoke to you about Promise Mascot Agency. What has the reaction been like from the community since its release – particularly the Disability community? Any favorite stories?

We’ve had an incredible reaction from everyone. We make games full of characters and environments we love, but you never really know how people will react until the full game’s out there. We’ve really been blown away by the support and how many people have told us about their experiences with Promise Mascot Agency.

We released a demo of Promise Mascot Agency a few weeks before the game was out. One of the things we saw was that some players struggled with our font choices. The whole game leans into a visual style and whilst we were happy with the fonts, we really did not want to prevent people from playing because of that decision. Fairly quickly we got to work on building a font replacement option that was presented at the start of the game. We actually already had 75% of this implemented in the demo, but it wasn’t really surfaced to the player properly and we wanted to see if we could add more options and push it a bit further. On full release of the game, people really recognised and appreciated that feature and whilst it might have seemed like a big change late on in development, it was 100% worth it.

Whenever we get messages that praise a particular feature, or just the number of options we’ve added, it makes me so proud of the team. There’s always more you can do, but knowing that players have been able to make tweaks to enhance their experience, or change settings that enable them to play because of the work you have done is really rewarding.

We’re not doing anything revolutionary, but what I do think we do is show that indie games, and even tiny teams like ours can implement a wide range of features. (We only have two programmers on Promise Mascot Agency, and one of them is not full time)!

Beyond tags and UI features, how do you think the industry can come together to embed accessibility as a design mindset?

Whenever any developer makes a feature for a game, you naturally consider things like “How will the player activate it?” or “How difficult should we make it?” What we need to do as an industry is to start thinking not just about which button is pressed, but how it’s pressed. For example, when driving in Promise Mascot Agency you can use the default controls and hold RT to drive, but we know that holding a button down can be a barrier to some people. Once you realize that, it’s relatively trivial to add a toggle so it’s "tap-to-drive" or "tap-to-stop." From there, it’s also fairly straightforward to add a system that defines the speed at which you drive. Just those two things alone can make a big difference to how someone plays.

The tag guidelines are great for making sure that you consider areas you might not have thought about. For example, adding a motion sickness dot came fairly late in Promise Mascot Agency because motion sickness isn’t something that was reported to us by any tester. Without the guidelines, we might never have thought about it, and never have implemented the dot. Something like that isn’t a huge amount of work, and if it enables someone to play our game, then I strongly believe it should be included. Working as a small team, it’s easy for me to make that decision and get the work done.

There are, of course, lots of things we don’t do in Promise Mascot Agency that I wish we could do. I’d love to make sure we have a better scaling UI, and better visual and audio options. We are a small team and some systems are very time-consuming to make and maintain. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to do whatever you can do, though, and in the next game, I intend to take our learnings from Promise Mascot Agency and Paradise Killer and see what more we can do.  The more time developers put into making these options, the more we see what best practice looks like and we all learn from it.

The one thing I would love to see are accessibility toolkits that can be easily embedded into whatever engine you’re using. Unreal does do a great job of exposing some accessibility tools, and I believe they are adding more, but if we can evolve the tools to a point where we can easily embed best-practice tools into workflows at an early stage, then we’ll see it in more games, which benefits more players and of course raises awareness for everyone.

What does Xbox joining the Accessible Games Initiative mean to you as a developer who’s passionate about accessibility?

I’m very happy to be part of any program that enables more people to play more games. Whilst I don’t have any accessibility requirements myself, through family, friends and my previous work with disability charities, I’ve seen the joy that comes when someone has new hobbies and passions open up because their needs have been recognised.

Looking ahead, what opportunities do you foresee with Accessible Games Initiative tags becoming a cross-platform standard across the industry and other companies?

It’s going to be a big thing for players. A consistent, quick way to easily understand if a game meets your needs is going to not only help players make decisions about games they’re excited about, but it’s going to help discovery too. I’d love to see the tags getting used in recommendation and discovery algorithms. Players get to experience more games, and developers are rewarded for implementing accessibility features, so it’s a win-win.

As awareness increases, I think we’ll see that tag list expanding and going deeper on some needs. You only need to look at the Paralympics to understand that the competitions are separated into so many categories and classes due to the huge amount of variation people have. Things like vision impairment, or motor restrictions are not black and white; there’s a whole spectrum of different needs and I think that’ll start to be reflected in the tags.

What advice would you give to developers/companies looking to find more ways to make their games/platforms accessible to all players?

If you’re reading this and thinking if you should add some accessibility settings, just do it. Start small and think about an action in your game, like sprinting. If you need to hold a button down for that, how much work is needed to change the system so you can toggle it with a tap instead? If you can do that, then all you need is a setting in a menu to enable tap-to-sprint, and that’s it; you’ve helped someone play your game! Do something similar and you’ve helped someone else! Once you’ve implemented a couple of features, you’ll start seeing opportunities everywhere. As I mentioned above, it is hard to cover everything, and if you’re a small team, you will struggle to match what AAA studios with a lot of resources can manage, but everything you do will help others, and you will be recognized for it.

Alternatively, what advice would you give to those who are interested in adding the Accessible Games Initiative tags to their games?

Again, if you’re reading this and you’ve never heard of the tags, or you’re wondering if you should add them, just go and do it. Read through the tags and the requirements and do an honest assessment. Think about what the tags are asking, and why they might be important to players. Just understanding this will help you develop more accessible games. If you’re already able to tick some boxes then that’s wonderful!

For more information on the Accessible Games Initiative tags, head over to Xbox Wire for a Q&A with Brannon Zahand, Senior Technical Program Manager at Xbox, and Steve Saylor, content creator and gaming accessibility advocate.