Store pages will tell you a game's release date, file size, genre and whether it has in-app purchases. Until recently, they've been much worse at answering a more basic question: can I actually play this?
If you need large subtitles, remappable controls, narrated menus, reduced motion or the ability to save anywhere, that answer decides whether a purchase works out or turns into a refund request. For years the information has been scattered across trailers, specialist reviews and settings screenshots. A cross-industry effort now wants to put accessibility tags on the store page, next to everything else.
What the Accessible Games Initiative is
The Accessible Games Initiative is a shared set of accessibility tags that publishers and storefronts can put on game pages and in digital catalogues. It's run by the Entertainment Software Association and was developed by Electronic Arts, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Ubisoft. The goal is straightforward: tell players which accessibility features a game has before they buy it.
The tags cover input, gameplay, visuals and audio. Examples from the launch include large and clear subtitles, difficulty levels, save-anytime support, narrated menus, multiple volume controls, mono sound, and chat speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
Two details matter. The tags describe features; they aren't a seal of approval. And participation is voluntary, so a game without tags may still have good options, and the system can sit alongside labels that storefronts already use.
Why "accessible" on its own isn't enough
Players don't all face the same barriers. A game can be great for someone who needs subtitle controls and impossible for someone who can't do repeated button presses. A list of specific features gives you something to check against your own needs.
Even specific tags leave questions. "Large subtitles" doesn't tell you about contrast, speaker names, background opacity, or whether text scales in every menu. "Difficulty levels" doesn't say which parts of the game you can adjust. Labels are where an informed decision starts, not where it ends.
Buying a game shouldn't require detective work
Without tags, players piece the information together. A publisher might post an accessibility blog at launch. A specialist site might test the options. Someone uploads a settings screen, and someone else answers a forum question. All of it helps, but it assumes time, confidence and a tolerance for spoilers.
It also assumes the information exists. Smaller games often get no accessibility coverage at all. Store descriptions use broad promises rather than listing settings, and plenty of reviews spend hundreds of words on frame rate without mentioning whether you can remap controls.
This isn't only about permanent disability. A sprained wrist makes ordinary controls hard. Fatigue changes how long you can hold a button. Someone playing late at night relies on captions, and someone on a small handheld screen needs bigger text. A player new to action games may need generous timing while they learn.
Accessibility filters could change game discovery
Most browsing starts with genre and mood: cozy game, tactics RPG, co-op shooter, short narrative game. Accessibility adds another layer: an RPG with narrated menus, a puzzle game that doesn't rely on colour, an action game you can play without holding buttons.
If storefronts turn standard tags into filters, those needs become part of ordinary browsing. Players could start with games that meet their requirements instead of falling for a game first and investigating second.
It helps smaller developers too. Big releases can pay for polished accessibility pages and get detailed coverage. A small game with careful controls or excellent captions often has no reliable way to show that off, and a shared label makes the work visible without a marketing budget.
The catch is that filters only work when the catalogue is well tagged. Voluntary adoption means gaps, publishers will interpret borderline cases differently, and patches can add or break features after launch. Stores need clear definitions, upkeep and a way to correct bad listings. A stale tag is worse than no tag, because it gives you false confidence.
Tags don't replace accessibility reviews
A tag tells you what's there. A review tells you how well it works. A label can confirm large subtitles; a review tells you whether they stay readable in bright combat scenes, whether background dialogue is captioned, and whether text vanishes too fast. The same goes for remapping, colour options, camera movement and quick-time events.
That's why specialist criticism like Can I Play That? stays essential, along with player reports that catch settings working in the main game but not in the tutorial or a late-game sequence. On the developer side, the Game Accessibility Guidelines have been around since 2012. The new tags tackle the other end of the same problem: helping a buyer recognise those features in a shop.
The best way to check a game uses three layers:
- Store tags for a quick, consistent summary.
- Publisher documentation for the detail of each setting.
- Accessibility reviews and player reports for how the settings actually behave.
An accessibility checklist before you buy
Start from your own barriers rather than a general "accessibility score."
- Vision: text size, contrast, colour alternatives, screen reader or narrated menus, options to reduce visual clutter.
- Hearing: captions beyond dialogue, speaker names, directional indicators, separate volume sliders.
- Motor: full remapping, hold versus toggle, alternatives to repeated inputs, timing windows, support for adaptive controllers.
- Cognitive: objective reminders, adjustable difficulty, clear navigation, pause behaviour, the ability to save when you need to.
Then check how far each feature reaches. Does remapping cover menus as well as gameplay? Does text scaling reach the inventory screen? Can camera shake be reduced everywhere? Is "save anytime" a real manual save, or a checkpoint that only works outside combat? Those questions are what separate a feature on a list from one you can rely on.
Recommendations get better too
Consistent names make feedback more precise. Players can ask for specific features, developers can see what people search for, and reviewers can compare implementations without inventing new terms every time.
It changes how friends recommend games as well. "You'd like this" becomes "you'd like this, and it has the subtitle and motion settings you need," which is far more useful. That's the kind of detail we'd love to see in reviews on Perthro, where a note about readable captions or exhausting button-holds tells a friend more than the star rating.
Players shouldn't have to buy a game to find out whether they can play it. Tags won't fix everything, but getting specific accessibility information onto the store page fixes that part.
