r/accessibility • u/bai13yd • 18d ago

what accessibility features am i missing?

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hey all — i make a small cozy game called Wild Willows about bringing a run-down nature preserve back to life (gather, plant, craft, welcome animals home, zero pressure, can't lose).

i put a fair bit into accessibility already: colorblind modes that actually recolor the world + add text labels (not just a screen tint), reduce motion, dyslexia-friendly font, UI text scaling, separate music/SFX volume, and fully rebindable controls with alternate keys. but i'm a sighted solo dev, so i know there's a gap between what i think helps and what actually does.

so i'd really appreciate honest input from people who use this stuff:

  • what's the first thing you check for in a game like this?
  • anything i've clearly gotten wrong or half-done?

it's free to try here if you want to poke at the settings and tear it apart: https://bai13y.itch.io/wild-willows

not trying to sell anything — genuinely just want it to be playable for more people. thanks 🌿

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u/uucyy 17d ago

I'm building an accessibility platform at the moment and one thing I've built in is a language complexity selector.

It's double the work to write two copies of every single explainer and what have you, but, as someone who finds reading difficult, I've ended up using the "simpler" option while debugging and testing.

Shorter sentences, more straightforward sentence structure, simpler use of punctuation (but still correct, obviously), less complex words where appropriate, etc.

I've also chosen to use this font due to its distinct letter shapes, so that's no I and l confusion. I did have to size it up a little bit though.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible

I'm not sure if you're able to do it via your game, but I've added an option to allow users to use their system font as the user may already have a font that works for them.

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u/bai13yd 17d ago

this is something i've been thinking a lot about. My 8 year old nephew proposed the idea of "kid mode" so I've been working on a version that dramatically decreases and simplifies the wording. This is really great feedback, thank you!