ESA’s Accessible Games Initiative – What Does It Mean?

25 March 2025

At GDC 2025 the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced a cross-functional collaboration with top game industry companies to empower developers to share accessibility information about their games on their website, store pages, and more. We believe that this new tag system – which includes tags such as ‘Playable with mouse only’, ‘Stick inversion’, ‘Colour alternatives’, and ‘Narrated menus’ – represents an important step forward in bringing accessibility to the forefront of our industry.

So, what exactly was announced by the ESA?

To start, 24 tags have been made public, aiming to bring the industry together in using a consistent, accurate taxonomy about gaming accessibility. We expect this list to grow over time.

Game studios and publishers such as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Google, Microsoft and Nintendo of America have participated in the launch of this initiative as founding members. Additional companies have since then joined the initiative, including Riot Games, Square Enix and Warner Bros.

Other game developers and publishers are encouraged to join the initiative and commit to using these tags to better inform their audiences about what their games have to offer in terms of accessibility considerations. Implementing these tags industry-wide will take some time, as companies start to go through the tags criteria and as more developers join.

These tags represent an important step forward in bringing accessibility to the forefront of our industry. With the knowledge that the gaming population grows every year and that 45%* of the 44.1 million disabled Americans* play video games, we can hardly continue to ignore the necessity of accessibility considerations in gaming.

What does this mean to you, as a game developer/publisher?

Simply put, you are encouraged to get familiar with the initiative and its criteria to evaluate which tags are applicable to your game(s). No matter where you are at in your accessibility journey, offering transparency and allowing your audience to make informed purchase decisions is not only important, but highly appreciated by disabled players. The applicable tags should be added to your store pages, product pages, and websites wherever relevant. The ESA and this initiative are U.S. based, but developers internationally are invited to participate – especially if they plan to launch their games in the U.S.

While it is not mandatory to participate in this initiative, we strongly encourage you to consider joining in. Not only this will help better inform your players and increase storefront visibility, it will also give you clear accessibility objectives to aim for—given that each tag comes with clear criteria and steps to follow. While these tags are certainly not the only thing you should aim for, they are a great indicator of common low-hanging fruits.

Need help to support your accessibility goals with testing, consulting, and research focused on accessibility? Our Advancing Accessibility team is here to accompany you at any stage. You can reach out to us at [email protected]

What does this mean to you, as a player?

Finding games that meet your needs can be a daunting task. In an industry where different terms are used to describe the same thing, or similar terms are used to describe different things (see our Approachability vs Accessibility blog post), finding which games have adopted accessibility considerations that will render their product enjoyable to you can be difficult.

The ESA is hoping that our industry can adopt at unified voice to make sure that we all speak with the same terminologies when it comes to gaming accessibility information. To aid in this effort, encourage your favourite game developers to join this initiative on social media and via community feedback channels.

At the moment, you can also rely on the feature tags used in the Xbox and PlayStationstorefronts to help you find games that have implemented features that matter to you.

Tags Categories Breakdown

The 24 tags are spread through 4 umbrella categories:

Auditory Features
Gameplay Features
Input Features
Visual Features

You can’t yet see which games have applied tags to their storefront and website, with the ESA informing that game companies are still adding the tags and that announcements are soon to come. Stay tuned!