Sony shows off God of War Ragnarok’s accessibility features

theverge.com:

In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Santa Monica Studio is showing off a bunch of the new accessibility features for God of War Ragnarok, including a new audio descriptive version of the game’s announcement trailer.

All of the accessibility options from God of War have been brought forward, and new features have been added to Ragnarok, resulting in over 60 adjustable settings. A selection of the features described includes auto sprint, subtitle / caption size and color, as well as a high contrast mode that’ll make characters more visible against backgrounds. There’s also a neat feature that’ll sound audio cues whenever an interactable object is nearby. In God of War, there were several times when it was not obvious what the player was supposed to do next, and having a feature like this will definitely help me cut down on the number of times I get stuck.

Accessibility features benefit everyone, and it seems a lot of publishers are taking that seriously. The Last of Us 2and Horizon Forbidden West both had extensive options that encompassed a wide range of adaptive needs. Other publishers and platforms like Microsoft and Twitch also seem to be making the effort to make their products for everyone, no matter their needs. Recently, Microsoft announced it’s opening a new and improved Inclusive Tech Lab where people with disabilities can work in tandem with Microsoft on improving adaptive tech like the Xbox Adaptive Controller. And on Twitch, the streaming service is celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day by spotlighting many streamers with disabilities and sharing what it’s doing to make the platform more inclusive.