The evolution of video game accessibility on Xbox consoles in the Far Cry game series

Abstract Video games are part of the culture and industry of the modern age. This form of entertainment is recreation for billions of people. It is important that people with disabilities are not partially or completely excluded from this form of entertainment. The accessibility of the content on websites and web applications is ensured by the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and numerous directives. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for video games. Currently, there are no uniform game accessibility guidelines accepted by both publishers and developers, and no directives to ensure compliance with the guidelines’ recommendations. In the course of our work, we developed a game accessibility evaluation method for the accessibility classification of games published on the Xbox console. We used this method to analyze the games in the Far Cry game series to see how they fulfil the Xbox Accessibility Guidelines (XAG) and other accessibility preferences. The analysis showed that the first parts of the game series had little or no support for accessibility, however, as time progressed, the number of features supporting accessibility increased significantly. Having identified the main problems, we have made a number of suggestions for game publishers and developers to increase the accessibility of video games.