Steam is adding screen reader support and other accessibility tools
Valve is introducing accessibility features for players with disabilities in its latest beta for Steam Big Picture Mode and SteamOS. The features — listed in full and explained here — include options to modify the Steam UI, like a high contrast mode, as well as a built-in screen reader for SteamOS.
In its post, Valve describes the features as “just the first accessibility features we’re making available.” For now players on both Big Picture Mode and SteamOS will get:
- A scaling slider for text size
- High-contrast mode to make buttons and text more visible
- A “reduce motion” toggle that disables some animation and screen transition effects
SteamOS devices (at this point, the Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go S) can also find:
- A screen reader with adjustable pitch, volume, and reading rate, enabled and disabled either through settings or with a two-button shortcut
- A color filter that affects both the Steam UI and any games you’re playing — you can choose between grayscale, inverted display brightness, or inverted display colors
The features are available on a new Accessibility tab in the settings, seen below for SteamOS.
Earlier this month Valve also started letting Steam users filter games by accessibility support — including some options similar to the ones above, as well as adjustable difficulty and speech-to-text or text-to-speech chat. It’s encouraging players with disabilities to suggest more features in a discussion thread (a mono audio toggle is looking popular.) And for anyone who doesn’t need these features, while I haven’t been able to try the beta yet, it sounds like might all be getting a bare-bones universal Kurosawa mode.