Ubisoft’s The Division 2 is the latest game to tackle accessibility options, launching with an assortment of settings aimed at increasing inclusivity for gamers with disabilities.
Among these options are a narrator for menus, user interface editor, and various types of subtitles on Xbox.
When The Division 2 first starts up, you’ll encounter a setup menu. It’ll include the options Enable Menu Narration (English only), Large Fonts, Game Language and Dialogue Language. Menu narration and font size are part of the game’s accessibility options, and both can be enabled by toggling the setting to yes. While the option to turn on large font size has its own limitations, the menu narration leaves a lot more to be desired.
When Narrator is enabled, it will initialize a robotic voice that reads text aloud, making it a bit easier to navigate through menus. It covers the character creation screen and the general settings of the game, but that’s about it. Players who were excited to use this option were expecting a much more thorough approach to the menu narration feature considering The Division 2 is a game where you’re constantly in menu screens managing your inventory, weapons, skills, and more.
Additional features aimed at making The Division 2 more inclusive to disabled gamers are visual tweaks like higher contrast and colorblind settings (Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, and Protanopia), as well as four different subtitle options that include scripted dialogue, dialogue and barks, and dialogue and barks including full captions.
Another concern many players had with The Division 2 is related to the text size of the button prompts located on the left corner of the screen. The prompts display different actions depending on the menu you’re in and can be hard to read even when you’re close to the TV or monitor. While the option to make text bigger is presented in The Division 2 from the very start, it doesn’t apply to everything.
Jesse Anderson, also known as BGFH, is a technology, gaming, and VR accessibility advocate and consultant. He recently spoke on a panel alongside Steve Taylor and Meghan Dornbrock during the Game Accessibility Conference (#GACONF for short), hosted by the International Game Developers Association in San Francisco. The three talked about their own experiences with different games and came up with a list of features they would like to see worked on.
Some suggestions included bigger text sizes and contrast options, narrated text to speech for menus and other screens, and a way to find out what accessibility options will be available prior to the game’s release. “A lot of times we don’t know whether we will be able to play a game or not until it’s out,” said Anderson.
As for The Division 2, he wishes there was a way to disable menu transparency in-game. “If you are looking at an area in the game where the game graphics are a similar shade to the text, it can be extremely hard to read. There should be an option to, at the very least, have a solid background behind the text to make it clear. Larger font options would also help,”
“My dream, though, would be for those menus to be narrated through text-to-speech just like the main menu.”
When David Tisserand, Accessibility Project Manager at Ubisoft talked about the companies plans for improving accessibility, he confirmed that the company is actively listening to the community and their feedback to improve the accessibility of not only The Division 2 but across all upcoming games.
He explained that features like the menu narrator and HUD customization are “part of a larger initiative to make our games more accessible for all players”. Feedback played a major part in creating these features since blind and low vision players have been requesting them for a while.
In response to recent comments about The Division 2, Ubisoft Massive tells us it’s their plan to address some of the issues in upcoming updates. Concerning the menu narrator, they’re “looking at supporting more and more parts of the menu over time”. Text sizes are something the publisher is aware of, too.
“It was a matter of finding the right technology and the right design flow.”
“We’re going to keep making the game even more accessible through future title updates, and increasing text where it’s possible is something we are definitely looking into.”
Ubisoft may have already taken the first steps by including new features that make The Division 2 more accessible, but the room for improvement is clear. Ubisoft says it’s listening and that there are plans to improve the experience for marginalized gamers in The Division 2.