Uh... that's a hard one, because that all depends on your definition of accessible, which, especially among sighted developers will differ. A fighting game is accessible with a very loose sense of the word, though most would say playable not accessible. And most games these days don't have accessibility features, they just happen to be playable... which is different. So I don't think a box like that would mean a lot, until the accessible game market gets bigger and there's some sort of standard.

Yes, but then again each developer's definition of playable without visuals will be different... some developers will not consider Street Fighter a game that is playable without visuals. But it is. And it's not screen reader accessible, but it's still very much a game we can navigate fully. I'm not writing this to contradict, I'm just not sure about the plausability of something like this. Which storefront just put up that option? I guess screen reader accessible would be the optimal definition... but there again, very few games on the storefronts you mentioned other than Google Play and Itunes are likely to have games that are actually screen reader accessible, and that doesn't necessarily include all the games we can play if you want to include the ones on the storefront which are not screen reader accessible but that blind people can still play to a great extent.

Yeah... that's true. My only problem still remains that the definition of blind-friendly is completely subjective. A game might be tagged when it really isn't, but more likely a game that is blind friendly may not be tagged because the developer doesn't assume it to be.

Wouldn't be tagged as an audiogame... playable by the blind and screen reader compatible are more likely ones, but still leaves the worst one to wide interpretation. hahaha.

User submittable tags already exist on Steam, but not one single person has, for example, tagged skullgirls as being blind accessible.

I 100% get that any developer submitted tags would not result in a complete list, as it would not show games that are accidentally accessible. Other tags, such as remappable controls our subtitles, don't have the same issue at all.

But would it not still be a useful way to discover new content to be able to click on a blind-accessible tag and see a list of some games that the developers believe are accessible, even though it wouldn't cover everything?

There's also subjectivity on what's good enough. Some people think that copying to clipboard is enough for supporting screen readers, some would demand support through the proper means and not limited to any screen reader in particular. Also there's the issue of supporting deafblind players (for whom audio-only solutions don't work) and partially deaf (for whom stereo-only solutions don't work).

And yeah, "blind" is vague. I've got somebody who's legally blind say that Sol with default settings is accessible, which shows the threshold for being considered blind is quite low.

Hi.
my issues are the stores themselves ian.
ich.io is fully accessable.
google play is semi accessable though to get all their music you buy for pc at least there are loads of web play download restrictions and the only other way to get things is their usable music manager.
As for itunes the itunes client while usable is not really as accessable as I'd like though their web store via brouser is accessable.
Gog.com I have no idea if its accessable or not but if its just a website then it may be.
Steam is not accessable you need a capcha to signup anyway and the client is not really blind user friendly.
asura while the site was accessable the software was some windowed html thing which while semi accessable with supernova 12 only went so far.
Out of all those stores ich.io was the most and the best way for me if I was a dev would to include a paypal button on my site and be done with it.
ich.io may be the acception its a website and supports paypal and other formats but its the only store I have found good.
Now access wize I don't have time to brouse a store to find something which is or may be accessable.
I found it out the hard way that some stuff even visual gamebooks are not accessable.
There are some devs with contacts and some without those.
The fact is I don't want to spend 30 bucks on something only to find its not accessable and more over the dev is not contactable.
On the other hand I have just spent 40 bucks on the physical paypal assisted walkerman by scalemail.
The dev was contactable in fact I got him to make his games accessable.
Sadly though if something has 1, custom images, buttons, and graphics and is allready built its unlikely devs will actually bother trying to make it work.
If its easy like turning something off and on or updating a library they will do it.
Or if you ask them directly and explain they may try to do that.
However you do rely on the dev themselves to want to conttinue.
I have had people in the past that just don't do anything.
Ofcause it helps when the tools used by that dev are built for access and all you need is to turn it on or something.
Better still if the tools are free or opensource and themselves come from someone that made them with access in mind.
Ofcause I havn't needed to venture to any store as such or at least not for much.
Google play I went for some music because of paypal access and I'd do it again for that access.
Ich.io well I'd do it again.
asura I never got the client to work so unless I can buy without it I won't be doing anything even though I am registered.
Steam can f**ck off as far as I care.
If they won't improve their client no matter if their games are accessable I won't buy from them.
I am so happy neilsbauergames didn't go fully steam because their games are good.

I have to agree with Assault, until there is a standard by which a game's accessibility can be measured, accessibility is subjective enough that with a standard, it would be more confusing than useful.

What Steam is doing with caption tags is a step in the right direction, but I notice that Steam themselves aren't taking that step by making their client more accessible, so the caption tag is of little value.

How about crowd sourced verification - so a developer says that a game is accessible, and gamers are then free to disagree with that.. if enough gamers flag it as incorrect, the listing is removed?

Not quite, there is a pending law that games currently have an exemption from, but that only applies to in-game communication, rather than gameplay.

There are ways around misuse, for example in the old xbox arcade system when a game was uploaded there was an inner circle of a few hundred gamers whose job it was to check out all of the claims that were made about that game's features.

If a game received enough flags, it didn't automatically remove the features from the listing, it flagged it up as needing review by xbox staff.

If there were any serial musers, they were kicked out of the circle of reviewers. Which they wouldn't want, as there was a motivation to be a reviewer - the reviewers received all of the games they reviewed for free.