Subtitles, user interface elements, and on-screen prompts are too darn small.
My eyes ain't what they used to be. It's increasingly an issue for me when playing games to be able to actually parse what information is up on screen. Sure, this may sound a bit "old man yells at cloud" but I won't be alone in this.
This isn't just an issue when playing on a small handheld either (where poor scaling often makes things super hard to see) — the text elements of certain games even on a big TV can often seem a touch on the small side.
Whether it's subtitles in a game that are set in way too small a font, a tiny user interface element that's hard to spot and has generally poor contrast, or even the score counter of a frantic game of Halo: Infinite — I'll often struggle to make out the information that's on display in a timely manner.
Of course, several games get these crucial accessibility options things right, and for those I tip my lovely blue hat to the developers who cared enough to make it a consideration worth exploring and implementing. But there's got to be an easier way here?
I'd love to see accessibility for such things baked-in at the console level. Imagine being able to boot up your new Switch 2 and having the ability to set your preferred text size, contrast, and more in one go — a global setting, set once, that all games can then refer to. No more needing to set your preferences on a per game basis.
Laura Kate Dale
The practicalities of implementing such a feature are beyond me, but it's a bit of wish casting that I'd like to put out into the world.
In the mean time developers, please take heed of Liam Dawe's words from over at GamingOnLinux — specifically on adding text and interface scaling into your games. He adds:
Think about this too: add into it the ageing population, with more and more older folks continuing to play games, this situation is only going to get worse as the years go on.
Liam Dawe
