Sony has announced on the PlayStation Blog that the PlayStation Store on PS5 starts rolling out accessibility tags globally. The accessibility tags are a way for developers to communicate what accessibility features the game provides which allows users to make a more informed decision. Developers can provide tags for PS4 and PS5 versions of games and these can be compared between the two.
Tag, you’re it
There are more than 50 tags developers can choose from, across 6 categories. Note that in the store, the tags are called accessibility features. When available, pressing the triangle button will show the accessibility features that have been selected for the game. Browsing through the features will show a short explanation. It is also possible to quickly go to the system’s accessibility settings from this page. The following video shows how this looks on the PlayStation Store page for Ghost of Tsushima.
The blog post mentions a few examples in each category. Combined with the information from the video we can confirm the following tags across the different categories.
Visuals
- clear text
- large text
- high contrast visuals
- color alternatives
- audio cue alternatives
- directional audio indicators
Audio
- volume controls
- 3D audio
- mono audio
- screen reader
- visual cue alternatives
Subtitles and captions
- playable without subtitles
- subtitles (advanced)
- subtitle size
- clear subtitles
- clear captions
- large subtitles
- large captions
Controls
- controller remapping
- adjustable stick inversion (basic)
- thumbstick sensitivity
- playable without button holds
- playable without rapid button presses
- playable without motion controls
- playable without touch controls
- playable without controller vibration
- playable without adaptive trigger effect
Gameplay and Online communication
We can’t see these in detail in the video, so for gameplay we only know of difficulty levels, skippable puzzles, simplified QTEs, and game speed adjustments. Additionally, for online communication the blog post mentions text or voice chat transcription and ping communication.
A full list has not been given, and it’s possible the caption and subtitle tags may be the same but named differently in the blog post. We will have to see when it rolls out to our consoles!
Huge, if true
If the tags rely on developers self-reporting the features, there is a risk of incorrect tags being applied. Even when intentions are good, honest mistakes can be made and wrong tags may be applied, or tags may be missed. We do not know if and how Sony plans to make sure the tags are correct. In their publicly available documentation for the Xbox Accessibility Feature Tags Microsoft claims they will contact the developer to change tags when they are found to be incorrect, but there it’s also not clear how it is checked. Maybe in the future, we will see this become part of games’ certification processes to ensure correct tags are applied.
At the moment it does not seem like it will be possible to search for games by accessibility feature as is possible on Xbox, or if you can see the presence of tags before you open the game’s page. A way to easily see which games have tags applied would be welcome to avoid a tag-hunting mini game.
Those concerns aside, it is a great addition to the PlayStation Store, and once again shows the commitment of Sony to providing a more accessible environment on the platform. Don’t forget the accessibility collection on the PlayStation Store, or the upcoming Project Leonardo of which we hope to see more soon!
