Xbox's accessibility future includes focus on mental health, ASL, and education
Xbox's push into the expansion of accessibility resources for game developers got a small shot in the arm this year. The company debuted an update to its Xbox Accessibility Guidelines with new resources for considering players' mental health, as well as guidance on reducing motion sickness, on-screen text legibility, contrast, and input guidelines.
Developers can also now access the Gaming Accessibility Resource Hub for more tools and talks on expanding their games' playability.
Microsoft also debuted a new American Sign Language Twitch channel and other community-focused initiatives to further center accessibility for players. They can now search for accessible games on the Xbox store or create accessible environments in the educational edition of Minecraft.
These are relatively smaller pushes that build on Microsoft's efforts from the last few years, but they're also decent indicators of where the Xbox team wants to take its accessibility work in the years to come. Anita Mortaloni, head of accessibility at Xbox, told Game Developer that the company is encouraging developers to talk directly to players, and create new bridges to help determine where it can expand accessibility next.
To hear Mortaloni tell it, Xbox's recent accessibility efforts have been a bit of a reactive effort (in a positive way). New features like ASL/BSL integration into Forza Horizon 5, and updates to the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines that focus on mental health are driven directly by feedback from the disability and developer communities.
The mental health updates make for an interesting addition because the bulk of Xbox's previous accessibility efforts have been in accommodating physical or sensory disabilities. Mortaloni said that these latest
Read more on gamedeveloper.com
