Microsoft Store on Xbox Now Highlights Game Accessibility Features

The Microsoft Store on Xbox One and Series X|S has been updated with game accessibility feature tags. A similar feature is available on Xbox.com, the Xbox App on PC, and the Xbox Game Pass mobile app as well.

“If you’re a game developer, you can choose to use these tags to indicate common accessibility features in your games to help inform gamers’ decision to buy or download your title,” Microsoft’s Brannon Zahand writes. “There are 20 tags in total, based on extensive user research and discussions with our gaming and disability community. These include Narrated Game Menus, Subtitle Options, Input Remapping, Full Keyboard Support, and Single Stick Gameplay, to name a few. Game publishers can also include links to additional accessibility information for their titles.”

Microsoft says that it will hold developers to a “consistent bar for quality,” meaning that they must implement the underlying accessibility features in a useful way. For example, by providing not just subtitles but subtitles that can be sized to any user’s needs.

Microsoft previously tested the Game Accessibility Feature Tags feature with a select group of 11,000 Xbox Accessibility Insider League (XAIL) members to make sure it met their collective needs. And it has of course made some changes and improvements since then based on the feedback. There are over 325 products in the store tagged with this information now, it says, and it will add more games—and more tags—in the future. It will also add the ability to filter and sort games by these tags.