Xbox Is Expanding Its Accessibility Programs In Gaming

Xbox has announced plans to expand its gaming accessibility initiatives by building out the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAGs) and launching a "platform-provided" program tapping gamers with disabilities to get their feedback on further improving accessibility.

The XAGs, which were launched in January 2020, have new improvements that make them both easier to understand and implement for game developers. These improvements include adjusting the language to make it clearer to grasp, adding "scoping questions" to help developers identify specific elements, and updating goals to make them easier to understand.

Xbox is also bolstering its partnership with the Gaming & Disability Community to ensure that disabled gamers have their voices heard and limitations respected. Players with disabilities will be included in the accessibility testing programs. This collaboration will see games tested against the XAGs by members of the disabled games community to request and suggest more ways video games can be accessible to the 61 million people with disabilities. This initiative is an "industry-first, platform-provided" program, Xbox said in a news release.

This comes two years after the Xbox Adaptive Controller, which has been a success for Microsoft by letting gamers with disabilities create setups geared toward their capabilities. The controller comes with a small number of buttons on the top, but its main distinguishing feature is a huge number of ports for various inputs. This lets whoever is using it plug in an input device that best fits their own needs.