There are a lot of things in this life that we take for granted. The average person does things or can do things in such a way that suddenly not being to do it would be mind-boggling. For video games, developers make titles to fit the standard person, but not everyone is a standard person–different people have different needs and issues that need to be compensated for in order to truly play the game well. Thankfully, games like The Last of Us Part 1 have features that help with that.
The term “accessibility features” is what the game industry uses to tell those with certain impairments or disabilities how they can adjust the game to ensure they get the most out of it. Whether these features are used to compensate for your sight, your hearing, or your motor skills, certain games do want to help everyone out. On the PlayStation Blog, the team broke down the various settings that you can adjust on The Last of Us Part 1, and it’s a pretty detailed list.
For example, if your vision isn’t 100%, you can turn on the “Vision Accessibility Preset” and get things like audio clues versus visual cues. You can also skip certain puzzle segments since vision is required for them, the cinematics will be described to you versus just shown to you.
If you’re hard of hearing, turning on that preset will unlock different levels of subtitles and descriptors so that you know exactly what’s being said and done on screen without having to try and read lips or strain your ears. Certain awareness indicators will appear so that you can react through visuals and not sound.
Finally, if you have certain motor control issues, you can completely customize the control scheme in order to help ensure that you can play the game properly. Even if that means holding the control in an atypical format, the game will compensate for that. You’ll also get certain options in menus like weapon swap so that you can do it easily versus having to enter a bunch of menus to do tasks.
The list is again quite detailed, so if you need to observe these for yourself, please go to the blog so that you can get the full rundown.
It’s very refreshing to see The Last of Us Part 1 go to such lengths to ensure that all people can play the game. Hopefully, many more AAA titles will take the time and effort to go and make such accessibility possible.
Source: PlayStation Blog
