Sony’s giving the PlayStation Store and the PS5 a brilliant new feature
Sony has begun to roll out a new feature called Accessibility Tags for the PlayStation Store. These tags will allow players to discern which games have adequate accessibility features to meet their needs.
Accessibility Tags will be available on the PlayStation Store for the PS5 and PS4, respectively. While browsing the store, you can click on a game and press the ‘triangle’ button to view which tags a game has.
“We strive to make gaming more accessible for all players”, Senior Vice President of Platform Experience for SIE Hideaki Nishino said in a blog post (opens in new tab). The tags will include visual, audio, subtitle and caption, control, gameplay, and finally, online communication accessibility options; offering a range of helpful information to players.
Supporting content
“Together with the wide array of accessibility settings within the PS5 console UI, Accessibility Tags will empower you to personalize your PS5 gaming experience to your individual gameplay needs”, Nishino said.
These tags will roll out gradually for many PS5 big hitters, like Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarok, and Marvel’s Spider-Man, so there’ll be plenty of choices to find which games best suit your needs.
However, this feature won’t just be available for PlayStation exclusives. Sony has said it will work with “a wide range of developers to implement this feature in their game hubs on PS5”. It looks like we can expect Accessibility Tags to quickly become the norm for almost every game on the PlayStation Store, which is fantastic for those who want to have more control over the games they play.
Toeing the line
Sony has a good history of promoting accessibility within its games. Whether this be the new accessible controller codenamed Project Leonardo or the robust selection of accessibility options that have always been present in PlayStation first-party games.
God of War Ragnarok even had more than 60 accessibility options, an incredible number that encapsulated UI element resizing, a high contrast mode, and improved subtitles and captions. I, for one, love having captions in games, so being able to adjust the size of these to suit my needs best was a much-welcome addition.
While many other games like Halo Infinite or Forza Horizon 5 also implement fantastic accessibility features, it’s great that Sony is keeping up with its traditions in making accessibility easy, personalized, and integrated into many games in its store.