Game accessibility specialist here, I'm the person who Mark mentions at the end of the above GMTK video. I can shed some light on some of this 🙂
PS4 was the first console to gain accessibility features, in April 2015. As of last year every major gaming platform (XB, PS, Switch, iOS, Android, PC) has platform level accessibility functionality. They could all do more, but everyone is now on the right path.
The most commonly complained about issues in games themselves are remapping, colourblindness, text size, subtitle content & presentation, and intensity of effects and camerawork. There's a great deal more outside of those things too.
That's huge! Most new TV sales aren't that big, let alone ones people already own. A better test setup is 40" at 10 feet. But you're absolutely right in thinking a major cause of tiny text is designs not being tested in realistic TVs. Often they are never tested on any TVs. That needs to change.
While lack of ROI is a reasonably common misconception, it is 100% untrue. Uncharted 4's one hand control option was used by 1/3 (millions) of their players. Far Cry New Dawn's subtitles by 97% of their players. And that's just usage, not even looking at financial value/cost of good/bad PR, or the cost of remediation - for example deciding at the outset to use decent text size costs nothing, $0, is just a decision. But games like Death Stranding, God Of War and Outer Worlds having to go back in and try to patch in larger text after the complaints rolled in.. that can be extremely difficult and expensive.
Publishers have requirements. Ubisoft have had a hard requirement for every game they publish to have subtitles since 2008, following the uproar over the first assassin's creed game not having any.
And it's about to change for platforms. Stadia have announced that they are working on mandatory accessibility requirements to apply across every game on the platform. That'll have wider impact, first directly as most stadia games are released on other platforms too, and secondly indirectly through throwing down the gauntlet to their competitors.
It isn't a good approach, for many reasons. Microsoft have publicly stated many times that is only intended for legacy games, that it isn't a substitute and that devs need to implement it in-game. IMO it should be mandatory. It used to be, games were not allowed to be released on the Sega Saturn unless they had in game remapping.
See above Re Stadia. Indies actually lead this field, for a number of reasons. The basics are neither difficult or expensive if considered early enough.
There are already some regulations too 🙂
See above for ROI.
There are now regulations covering some games, anything with voice/text chat is covered by CVAA. Outside that though lots of companies are quickly jumping onboard, simply because they want to.
PlayStation was the first console to get accessibility features, in 2015. PSX was the first public company event to have an accessibility panel, in 2016. Also in 2016 the extensive accessibility work on Uncharted 4 and the publicity that PlayStation gave it turned perception of accessibility in the AAA sector on its head, much of the great work being done today stems directly from that. People like Shawn Layden and Phil Spencer have often publicly praised their competitors' accessibility wins.
An API for shared subtitling settings existed on the Xbox 360. Still does. But most devs don't know it exists, let alone use it.
See above, Sony have been leaders in this field and have had more of an impact on the games side of it than Microsoft have. Nintendo have at least done something now, and with the rapidly shifting consumer expectations they're going to have to do more, and quickly.
Moral obligation to stand along with - absolutely. That includes taking a stand over things like difficulty in sekiro.
It actually came from Google (see above), and the US government (see here -
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20190123/334910/Demystifying_CVAA.php). The EU recently signed similar laws to CVAA into effect, local laws for which should start appearing in around 5 years time. But CVAA is effectively a global law anyway as it protects the rights of US citizens, therefore affects developers who want their games to be able to be sold to people in the USA.
As far as written stuff goes, there's a great deal. E.g.
www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
Bingo, traditionally this has always been the main issue, lack of awareness. That's very quickly changing. While misconceptions sometimes do exist around cost, effort, benefit, impact on vision etc (most commonly regarding how to prioritise display against other work, i.e. 'how can I justify feature X when there's also feature Y to do', NOT 'feature X isn't worth us comsidering'), devs are jumping onboard very quickly. There are now around 20 people employed in full time game accessibility roles within studios and publishers, a few years ago that number was 3, a few before that it was zero. In a few months even just the positions I know are currently being filled will take it to 25. It's all moving in the right direction.
GDC usually has half a dozen or so accessibility talks. For the past few years there has been an entire conference solely on accessibility, check out the previous lineups -
https://www.gaconf.com/archive/
There isn't that much that can reasonably be required across all games. But a couple more that could be are text that is scalable/has large default, and subtitles that are comprehensive and with configurable presentation.
They've been blockers for a long time, but this is finally starting to happen. As of this year both unity and unreal are working on cross platform native text to speech and screen reader support, to make UI accessible to gamers with no or low vision. Unity have an open call out on their forums for feedback from devs on what they can do to help make accessibility implementation easier, there's tons that they could be doing.
Until then there are also third party engine plugins, like sInput, seeingVR, Yellow Subs Machine and Unity Accessibility Plugin.
There will not, because (apart from section 508 for games in federal use, including educational games in schools) ADA does not apply to games in any way. The closest is CVAA, which covers voice/text chat functionality and any UI or info needed to navigate to or operate it (
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20190123/334910/Demystifying_CVAA.php). CVAA lawsuits don't exist, it's all done through the FCC, though they have power to impose fines of up to $1m for non compliance.
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So in all... The state of the industry isn't quite as bad as some here think. For example these recent games all had a wide range of accessibility options -
Battlefield V
Madden 20
FIFA 20
Metro Exodus
Red Dead Redemption 2
Division 2
Devil may cry 5
Mortal Kombat 11
Apex Legends
Gears of war 5
Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Borderlands 3
Jedi Fallen Order
In 2016 it was massive news that one single game (Uncharted 4) had multiple accessibility options, so there's rapid progress.
All of these games are studios taking their first step, introducing a bit of functionality late in development. And they always say the same - "Man. If only we had thought about this earlier." In their next games they will have thought about it earlier, the next couple of years are going to see huge advances.
But there hasn't been one single game on that list that managed to get all four of these features right - colourblindness, remapping, text size, subtitles.
Those kind of basics are I think where mandatory requirements could step in, and it's platforms that can drive it. Stadia haven't revealed what their mandatory requirements will be yet, but I imagine that when they do it will quickly spread to other platforms too.
