Interview: Xbox director of accessibility, Anita Mortaloni

I have believed almost from the start that the Adaptive Controller is one of, if not the greatest gaming accessories ever created. It's great to see companies in recent years caring more about who is even capable of playing their games. I've even played a game that, when asking about color blindness settings, gave three different kinds of color blindness and asked which you had, and adjusted accordingly.

The implementation of color blind modes in games has been huge for me (I have strong protanopia color blindness). I'm all for making games more accessible to everyone. 👍

"at the end of the day, play is a fundamental human need."

This point cannot be underestimated.

Video games give us--whether we have a disability or not--something that is not afforded to us in other facets of life. Nuff said.

It seems like the answer on achievements kind of glosses over the question. They claim to let people play the way they want but then still put discriminatory achievements in their games. A perfect example is the LASO achievement in Halo Infinite. Not everyone has the fine motor control or reflexes to be able to complete this. I know there will be some people on this site will just say "get good" but in reality, that isn't an option for some people.

I agree Xbox has come a long way in their efforts for accessibility, but they still have a long way to go.

Ahayzo said:Agreed, I'm having trouble even thinking of a contender for the greatest accessory ever. As a software engineer I'm a huge fan of what MS is doing for accessibility, in gaming but also computing generally

I purchased the adaptive controller because I wanted to support what Microsoft was doing in this field. The issue is though what you purchase is just a base for expansion, it requires additional buttons and analog sticks to be a complete controller and it is very difficult to find the necessary accessories for it. Microsoft needs to work towards making the accessories for it more accessible in my opinion.

I hope the Xbox community continues to embrace accessibility, because it is growing the community and making it a much more pleasant place to play. This is one thing that Microsoft is doing well at, and I hope they continue pushing forward.

great article! i love to see how much work has been done to improve accessibility over the years. back when battlefield 4 came out in 2013, i was impressed by the option for some color filters, and now in 2022 you have games like forza horizon 5 that have sign language, changing game speed, and more.

sure theres more work that can be done, but i hope to see this grow even further

The amount of work being put into this stuff is incredible

Kudos to MS for the amazing job and also to you for the shout out

Ahayzo said:Agreed & the controller couldn’t be more versatile. I’m sure Microsoft has absorbed the bulk of the development & R&D costs—perhaps all of them. It is obvious that, in this & other arenas, Microsoft’s commitment to accessibility is absolute.

Anita Mortaloni & her team should be justifiably proud of everything they have accomplished.

Allgorhythm said:If I remember right from an interview I saw way back when, they make very little money on them. I believe it was actually started as basically a passion project from one of their designers who wanted it for his daughter. Even the packaging, from how the cables are secured all the way to the brown outer box they ship it to you in, was specifically designed to be as accessible as possible.

Ahayzo said:Yeah, it's even mentioned here, I believe the base unit is sold close to (or maybe even at) cost, with licensing fees waived for additional elements so long as they're up to code. Bespoke peripherals do not come cheap, as I'm sure my fellow music and fighting game fans can attest. All power to them, and kudos to Tom on a great interview.

I am glad that they do offer the adaptive controller. The way I see it, what you get and/or born with should never affect having any opportunities in life(not just video games). Just because you have a disability doesn't mean you don't have abilitiesThere is more than one way to skin a cat and as along as people have those opportunities to play - that is truly fair play.

Quickly though, one of the accessibility features has a personal place in my heart.

I have two deaf cousins a little older than me. Both of them are pretty good. One thing they told me is that they hate not knowing what was going on in the cutscenes, because there were no subtitles to help.

However, I showed one of them Forza Horizon 5 recently and turned on the sign language feature (which shows a translator in a inset signing the cutscene). My cousin doesn't cry often, but he broke down in tears after seeing that. He was blown away. He told me that this was a dream come true and he never thought it was possible in a video game.

After he left, I wept too because I know how much that meant to him.

I am not quite sure this falls under the umbrella of the discussion but I really wish they offered some better text scaling options. Modern games use super small font sizes and you can't even read it on a big TV.

gavmanwv3 said:Damn, that story set me off, too. I didn't even know that was a thing in FH5, that's awesome! Xbox is genuinely leading the way in terms of this kind of stuff, so it was great to arrange this chat with one of the brains behind the operation.

dropK1CK ninJA said:I think it fits. A lot of early 360 games especially (Dead Rising being an offender iirc) were guilty of this during the shift to HD, yet it's still a problem today in some games. The 4K bump will only amplify it unless options are added, too.

dropK1CK ninJA said:I wish more games used a subtitling or captioning format that allowed the user to increase the size of the font.

Ahayzo said:I remember seeing the same thing. Also, although some of the peripherals can be expensive, Microsoft partnered with certain manufacturers to ensure that there were cost effective peripheral sets.