10 Accessible Games For Blind and Low Vision Gamers

We’ve made it clear time and again: video games are for everyone, and any dev who has the resources to make their games accessible should give it the old college try. But when a medium is fundamentally inaccessible to a certain group of people, what can be done? As it turns out, quite a bit!

While it’s difficult to find a video game that’s fully accessible for gamers who can’t see at all (though there are a few), the games on this list all try to accommodate people with visual disabilities in one way or another. Some of them are fully playable without any sight at all; others are fundamentally visual experiences, but try to make it easier to play if you struggle with sight.

What Does Accessibility for Low-Vision Gamers Mean?

You might, on first blush, think that someone with a visual disability can’t play video games. But plenty of people with visual disabilities want to play video games! Not everyone who’s legally blind is completely unable to see. Some people who have visual disabilities can only see out of their peripheral vision, or have a very limited field of vision. Some people have a normal field of vision, but have no depth perception. And some people used to be sighted, but lost their vision at some point. Anyone in any of these categories might want to play video games, but might struggle without accessibility tools.

There are workarounds and accessibility tools for every disability, and visual disabilities are no exception. So, what do you need to do to make a game accessible for people with visual disabilities?

When you’re trying to make something accessible for people with a certain disability, you have two options: make it so you have to rely less on the inaccessible thing, or make the inaccessible thing easier to do. To give an example from another disability: if you have a game that’s inaccessible for colorblind people, you could make it so that you don’t need to use color in the game at all, or you could give people another way to distinguish between colors (like adding symbols instead).

To make it so that you don’t have to rely on sight, a lot of low-vision gamers need narrated text or screen reader support. Aim assist, clicking assist, various platforming tweaks like coyote time, and nonvisual cues for visual stimuli are all really helpful, too. To make seeing things easier, it’s helpful to increase the contrast on visual elements, simplify non-critical elements, provide large text, and include a zoom feature.

So, how do the games on this list use these features? Let’s find out!

This article heavily relies on the work of Christy Smith and the other indefatigable folks at CanIPlayThat. Without their hard work, this article wouldn’t have been possible.

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

If you haven’t heard of Resident Evil 4, you’ve probably been living under a rock, or perhaps a windswept island off the coast of Spain. Condolences on the zombie parasite infection. Resident Evil 4 is the third-person zombie action game. Its 2023 remake works to capture what made the original game special, while staying accessible for new players.

Resident Evil IV has a suite of accessibility features for most common disabilities, and visual disabilities are no exception. You can increase the opacity of the HUD, up the size of subtitles, and change your various scopes’ colours so they’re easier to see. The game has a dedicated “low vision” mode that turns on all the vision accessibility features by default. You can also turn on “assist” mode, which gives you a regenerating health bar and a comprehensive aim assist option. You can even toggle how sensitive the aim assist is with a slider, to get more or less help with shooting.

Capcom’s latest game shows a real commitment to improving accessibility, which has traditionally been one of their weaknesses. We’re excited to see what accessibility might look like in Resident Evil 9, and other games down the road.

The Last Of Us: Part II

The Last of Us: Part II is a grim narrative game, a cover shooter, a stealth action game, and a meditation on vengeance. It’s the story of Ellie, a young girl in post-apocalyptic Washington, trying to get revenge on her adoptive father’s killer. We’ve mentioned TLOU II in our accessibility articles about a million times by now, but it really is about as accessible as a triple-A game can get.

In TLOU II’s marketing, they claimed that a blind player could 100% complete this game and earn the platinum trophy, without sighted assistance -–- and the devs at Naughty Dog put in the effort to make that claim a reality. Pretty much everything in TLOU II is narrated, from tutorial text to button prompts to the save/load menu. The game contains an audio cue glossary, so without having to try and die a billion times, you can learn what every sound in the game means. The game contains various assist modes that help you navigate the world, find items, and sneak past enemies; with narration, high contrast visuals, and haptics, someone who has a visual disability can still experience the game without any help. And because the sound design, script, and presentation are so high quality, even without audio description you can understand what’s going on in the story.

The Last Of Us: Part II is the gold standard for accessibility in triple-A gaming. It also demonstrates that anyone with the budget to work this kind of accessibility into their game can, and therefore should.

Unpacking

Okay, we need a break from grim tales of zombies and revenge. Let’s move house!

Unpacking’s a heartwarming puzzle game where you take on the role of a girl unpacking her things as she moves through her life. As she grows up, you take her from her childhood bedroom, to her college dorm room, to her first apartment with roommates, and beyond. Figuring out a place for everything is a fun challenge -–- the level isn’t complete until every item has a home. And through the objects our heroine carries from move to move -–- and the things she leaves behind -–- you learn what kind of person she is.

The devs put effort into making sure that low-vision players can enjoy the experience, even though it’s a primarily visual one. For starters, the entire game has a zoom feature -–- you can enlarge the size of the HUD and the game world. The game never requires you to read text, and the menus are simple and clear to navigate. Objects snap to their location- if you’re trying to put a trophy on the shelf, it’ll automatically zip into place. And every object has its own sound cues when placed.

Unpacking’s an absolutely wonderful experience, and it’s great that the devs considered how to welcome low-vision players.

Kirby’s Return To Dreamland Deluxe

Kirby’s a platformer anyone can play, because Kirby is your friend. Whether you’re a four-year-old who’s never played a video game before or a seasoned veteran of Celeste and Super Meat Boy, you can pick up a Kirby game and have fun. And if you’ve got a vision disability, Kirby is likely to be accessible for you, too.

When it comes to platformers, the big thing you need for visual accessibility is contrast. The character needs to stand out from the background, and unnecessary background movement should be kept to a minimum. Kirby does this well; the little pink puffball stands out brightly from the environment, and has a nice crisp line around him. He’s easy to track on screen. Any text in game needs to be large and easy to read; Kirby’s got that too, and text is rarely necessary to keep the game going in any case. Combine that with the Magolor Assist mode, which makes some of the trickier sections in the game easier to navigate, and you’ve got a game that’s as accessible as possible for people who have visual disabilities.

It’s great to see the Kirby series continue its tradition of accessibility; anyone making a platformer should take some accessibility cues from Kirby.

Super Mario Maker 2

Speaking of making a platformer: In Super Mario Maker 2, you build everything! That means that creators can make accessible levels (or not), and players can get through the single-player campaign in whatever way they want.

Like Kirby, Mario’s fundamentally pretty accessible -–- especially if you pick the New Super Mario Bros or Mario 3D World styles. It may be a precise platformer, but it’s also got fantastic contrast, easily-parsed crisp visuals, and plenty of audio cues. The fonts are sized well, and you can zoom both the game and the HUD in and out.

The real kicker with Super Mario Maker 2, though, is player choice. And player choice is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can play the main story mission with assistance, and you can find levels that are made with accessibility in mind. On the other hand… a lot of level creators aren’t thinking about accessibility, because they’re trying to make a Kaizo level or because they’re still in kindergarten. You may need the help of a sighted friend to sort the wheat from the chaff. Overall, though, Super Mario Maker 2 is a fantastic, accessible platformer, and your creative hand can make it even more accessible.

Astro Bears

Astro Bears is a party game that’s like Slither.io on a sphere. You play as one of a handful of brightly coloured bear-astronauts, trailing ribbon behind you. Your goal is to avoid hitting the other bears or their ribbons, and out-survive your opponent. You can customize the size of the sphere and the length of your ribbons, and choose between a variety of bears with different abilities.

This one doesn’t have much depth, but as a fun party game that anyone can play, it’s an excellent pick for people with low vision.

Superliminal

Superliminal’s a first-person puzzle game about optical illusions, forced perspective, and dream therapy. You pick up objects and move them around; by viewing an object from different angles, it might seem bigger or smaller. When you put that object down, though, it will be the same size that it was when you were looking at it. So you can pick up a cube and bring it closer to your face, and when you put it down, it will be large enough to stand on.

The art style of Superliminal’s clean and easy to parse; objects don’t move and there’s no time limit, so you don’t need to worry about tracking objects. The puzzle mechanics are incredibly forgiving, and the game offers an assist mode for certain puzzles. The text, while not perfect, is easy enough to read, and you don’t need to read to complete the story. Most interesting of all, it can help people with depth perception issues explain how the world looks to their friends– it can be really satisfying to understand the world around you in an intuitive way, when you normally can’t.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most popular MMOs on the market right now -–- and with good reason. The world is gorgeous; the story is captivating; the enemies are iconic, and the gameplay is just plain fun. And who doesn’t love a game that lets you play as a catgirl? Thanks to the accessibility features that Square Enix put into the game, you can play it even if you have visual disabilities.

The game has an online manual, which works with a screen reader; it can help you learn the game’s mechanics without having to read. You can adjust the size of the HUD and menus, up to 200% -–- including things like the chat log and battle log. The game’s mechanics are clearly signposted, including lock-on targeting for enemies and markings on the floor for AOE attacks.

If you can read text, this is a fantastic game with a story that will stick with you for ages. And if you can’t, it’s still a fun and rewarding experience.

Color Jumper

Precision platformers are inherently inaccessible, and Color Jumper is no exception. In this game, you control a square with different colors on each side. The catch is that many level elements are colored, and you can only interact with them using the correct side of the cube. Want to land on a red platform? You’re going to need to land on it with your red side. Because of this, you might write Color Jumper off as being totally inaccessible for people who can’t see. But it’s actually more accessible than a lot of platformers!

First, Color Jumper has a colorblind mode, which uses card suits instead of colors. Second, the minimalistic art style makes visual tracking easy -–- the shapes are high contrast, and there’s no distracting background clutter. Third, while the game doesn’t have an assist mode, it does let you skip levels, so if you’re struggling too much, you can skip a level and come back to it later. Add to this the fact that the only text you need is in menus and the fact that the game counts your rotations, and the only place where it’s really lacking is in sound cues. Color Jumper is a game in an inaccessible genre, but it works to make itself as accessible as possible for low-vision gamers.

Supermarket Shriek

Do you want to race with a goat in a shopping cart, propelling it by screaming your head off? Supermarket Shriek lets you do that -–- and lets low-vision people do it without serious disadvantages. Supermarket Shriek is a (shopping) kart racer. You play as a man and a goat in a shopping cart, controlling it with the Power of Yelling. The campaign contains obstacle courses, collectathons, elimination death matches, and (of course) races; you can play against your friends, or play co-op with a friend (and control the action by screaming into a mic).

The game’s relatively easy to play with low vision, and with a few tweaks, it might be possible to play with no vision at all. The visuals are clean, clutter-free, and high contrast, meaning that it’s easier to navigate if you’re working with partial vision. Menu text is large and bold, all text in cutscenes is narrated, and you never have to read to progress in a level. Your kart, your collectables, and most enemies and obstacles make a distinct sound, and you can track your kart by the sound of the human and goat screaming. Most interesting of all, Supermarket Shriek lets you adjust the HUD’s position. If you’re playing with only part of your vision -–- say, if you don’t have any peripheral vision -–- you can move the HUD to the center of your screen, so that it’s easier to see and you have less visual fatigue.

These were ten games that are accessible to blind and low-vision gamers. Did we miss one of your favourites? We’d love to do a user submitted article about accessible games someday, so if you want to see your favourite accessible game get the kudos it deserves, drop us a link in the comments and we’ll take a gander. Thanks for reading!