Announced as part of GDC 2025, the ESA has launched the “Accessible Games Initiative” to focus on creating a common language to describe accessibility features within games. On its official website, Nintendo has announced that it will be joining the Initiative as a member with a focus on improving the information available to players on how accessible its games are. This will take the form of tags on the eShop and the My Nintendo Store that highlight what each game offers.
Moving forward, players will be able to find this information online and through the eShop as more publishers opt into supporting the Accessible Games Initiative. Players can find a list of tags on the official AGI website and those will become standard across all platforms in the future. It should help clarify what each game has instead of leaving descriptions up to the reader’s interpretation.
Accessibility started to become a focus for game developers in the eighth console generation as Sony began including different features in its games. Over time, more and more publishers jumped on board and it’s now fairly common to see accessibility features in brand-new titles. Some of the most important are colorblind options and scalable text, though with how varied people’s disabilities can be, it’s important to have a foundation dedicated to researching and implementing new features in games to accommodate as many people as possible.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
