Xbox announces new accessibility features in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day
Cultivating an inclusive gaming industry doesn’t stop at race and gender. It also includes accessibility and working to remove barriers for the 400 million players with disabilities across the globe.
Today, in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Xbox announced several new accessibility updates and features for players. It’s all part of Xbox’s mission to amplify and celebrate players with disabilities and highlight the importance of digital access and inclusion. Among the announcements:
- Firmware updates to the Xbox Adaptive Controller that include the ability to increase size and add tooltips for button images on the Xbox Adaptive Controller’s remapping screen.
- The ability to search and then filter Game Accessibility Feature Tags in the Xbox Store. The Accessibility Feature Tags, announced last fall, are designed to make it easier for gamers with disabilities to determine if a game is right for them. There are 20 tags in total, based on extensive user research and discussions with our Gaming & Disability Community. With this new update, players can search and then filter tags for over 400 titles.
- The recent launch of the ASL Xbox Twitch channel. Every day, the Xbox Plays team goes live on the Xbox Twitch channel, playing the latest and greatest titles from the world of Xbox. In April, they launched an All-ASL Twitch channel featuring interpretation for approximately 25 hours of livestreams each week.
- The recent launch of “BuildAbility” in Minecraft: Education Edition. In May, M:EE launched an accessibility World in partnership with the PEEL school, where students can understand, identify, and work to eliminate accessibility barriers in their school and community… all within the Minecraft universe.
- Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs) 3.0 update with information on mental health. Based off community and developer feedback, the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs) 3.0 update published in May includes a new mental health guideline, as well as info on motion sickness and expanded details on text sizing.
About the Author
Adrian Gunning Adrian lives in Melbourne Australia and has a huge passion for gaming, technology and pop culture. He recently finished his a Bachelor of Journalism and is currently focusing on games journalism. When not writing and playing video games, Adrian can be found in Comics 'R' Us debating the pros of the DC Universe and cons of the Marvel Universe.
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