Accessibility has become increasingly important over the years, and a big benefactor to that has been Microsoft. They've developed initiatives to ensure gaming can reach and be accessible to anyone and everyone around the world regardless of environment, financials, or disability; as seen with their Xbox Adaptive Controller, market-leading accessibility features, and more.
These practices have been adopted more frequently on a software level where games can be approached and accessed by millions whose visual impairments or physical disabilities may cause a hindrance to an optimal experience, but this has also been largely beneficial for everyone as a whole as games can now be played how the player wants rather than be forced to a set of preset functionalities and restrictions.
TUNIC
TUNIC came out to rave reviews thanks to its unique perspective on environmental storytelling and immersive gameplay, but an overlooked yet much-appreciated feature within TUNIC was its ability to keep health, stamina, and magic from depleting so players could focus more on exploration without the worry of danger.
TUNIC can be easily perceived as a fairly difficult game the deeper players get into it, so having the ability to have players opt between unlimited health, stamina, or magic at will is a great way to make the game approachable for those who may not be able to play harder titles, or who are less enthusiastic about games with a difficulty curve, easily making it one of the best Indie games on Xbox Game Pass.
The Last of Us: Part II
The Last of Us incorporates elements of stealth, crafting, dangers, and more that all marry wonderfully into a deep story of survival. But survival games, in general, can become a cause for concern as there's an emphasis on inventory management and the need for acute awareness.
The Last of Us: Part II brought a slew of accessibility features that allowed players to tune the game to their liking. Allowing slow-motion aiming, color-blindness settings, audio visualizers, and more, The Last of Us: Part II is surprisingly one of the best PlayStation games for beginners, with features that are inclusive for all.
Grounded
Even as grown adults, it's still easy to feel intimidated by tiny insects despite the massive size difference and advantage humans have as a species, but when the roles are reversed it can become a terrifying experience. Thankfully, Grounded understands that even though it's a great co-op and fantastic family-friendly single-player game filled with adventure and joy, the bugs and insects may prove to be too much for some.
Players can approach Grounded with virtually no concern regarding any potential phobias, with text-to-speech features, a colorblind mode, interactivity scaling, highlighted objects, and most importantly an arachnophobia-safe mode to change the look and sound of spiders.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Each entry in the Assassin's Creed franchise has gotten larger with each successor since Assassin's Creed Origins, but as they become bigger, it's important that they're tailored for all playing styles, schedules, and preferences. Thankfully, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the most accessible of the bunch, giving players an RPG they can be comfortable with without worrying much about the grind that typically comes with it.
There are three main areas of Assassin's Creed Valhalla that are the most important regarding accessibility, allowing the player to tailor how the game functions regarding combat, exploration, and stealth. All can be tweaked, including toggling sensitive content on and off, adjusting text sizes, icon sizes, QTE success rates, Menu Narration, and Closed Captioning, all of which really makes the game feel like it's working with the player rather than against.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Insomniac Games have consistently proved over the years that they're one of the finest and classiest studios around, and this is further shown by the accessibility options within their games that have allowed their work to cater to a wider audience with each new project.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart excels with a breadth of tweakable features, allowing anyone and everyone to enjoy the adventures of Ratchet and Clank. Off-screen ledge guards that help avoid unintentionally falling off a platform, shaders for heroes, enemies, hazards, collectibles, and objects to aid in visibility, simplified traversal, and combat assists make Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart an accessible experience for people of all ages and skill levels.
Sea of Thieves
Sailing the high seas can be both a cathartic and a laborious experience, depending on the actions taking place, but with a lot of visual information to be displayed via maps, journals, islands, and more, it can prove daunting to some.
Thankfully, the mantra at Rare and Xbox has been "When everyone plays, we all win" and the accessibility features within Sea of Thieves are hugely helpful for players looking to make the game a bit more palatable, with exceptional features in controls and interactivity. Accessibility is massively important for Rare, with over half of the updates since launch containing a new accessibility feature including many options for visual impairments.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Nintendo games are notorious for not having any options whatsoever. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, however, does provide a few new features that make the game its most accessible yet, coming in the form of Smart-Steering and Auto-Acceleration.
Mario Kart has always been an approachable game for players of all ages, but there are plenty that will also still be picking it up for the first time or might have some slight difficulty playing comfortably. With the Smart-Steering and Auto-Acceleration functions, players are able to avoid falling off tracks while turning semi-automatically and pressing on the gas without the need for a button input respectively. These functions have allowed many families to play together (especially with toddlers) and introduced many to the joy of Mario Kart without needing to sacrifice comfort.
Halo Infinite
First-person shooters have always had trouble being accessible due to their emphasis on multiplayer and reliance on reflexes, quick thinking, and waves of annoying enemies that can easily overwhelm the player, but Halo Infinite did a fantastic job in making sure that its campaign was one that could be enjoyed by everyone. In fact, the Accessibility menu is one of the first menus players are brought to by default when booting the game up for the first time.
Halo Infinite's accessibility allowed it to win two awards at the Video Game Accessibility Awards for its text features as well as the ability to get stronger in-game without having to engage in laborious activities that may be problematic for more casual players.
Psychonauts 2
Psychonauts was dormant for quite some time, but its dedicated following allowed Psychonauts 2 to thrive and go on to win multiple awards, becoming a critically-acclaimed title for Microsoft in 2021. One of its most lauded features, however, was that its accessibility menu had options that made the game playable to anyone.
From interface toggles, UI adjustments, flexible control bindings, color blindness options, and more, Psychonauts wants to be as approachable as possible, but its biggest benefit is the assist feature to its gameplay where players can toggle no fall damage, invincibility, and even narrative combat to help with focusing on the story.
Forza Horizon 5
More than any other game, Forza has become somewhat of a poster child for the Xbox Adaptive Controller thanks to its flexibility and ability to be enjoyed no matter what. Whether someone has low reflexes, is hard of hearing, or needs help with what's on-screen, Forza is accommodating in many ways, offering little to no obstacles for players to experience one of the greatest racing games of all time.
It has all the expected features of text-to-speech, auto-acceleration, colorblind options, and so on, but its biggest feature - and a first for video games - is support for American Sign Language and British Sign Language in Forza Horizon 5's cutscenes. Forza and Xbox have been pushing and growing what it means to be accessible, and having the monumental feature of ASL and BSL is an industry-changing approach that will hopefully be largely adopted in the future.