Accessibility in games has come some way in the last few years, especially when it comes to in-game options such as difficulty and UI customization. In an interview published by Square Enix, Mariah Robinson, game director for Marvel's "The Avengers," and Megan Marie, senior community manager, explained that Crystal Dynamics has expanded its accessibility efforts to include marketing and representation. They detail how Crystal Dynamics is taking a holistic approach, extending its commitment to accessibility to marketing and representation.

The studio worked with consultants and accessibility specialists to get initial feedback on the superhero action. While most of the chat focused on the effort rather than the results, several features built into the game were mentioned, including a high-contrast UI, remappable controls, subtitles and closed captioning, and a training room.

Other launch features are being kept under wraps, but attempts to make the game more accessible will not end when the game is released.

"Accessibility is not a finite goal, but an ongoing pursuit," says Marie. 'This is a very ambitious game for us, so we will continue to work on our accessibility ambitions after launch and will continue to roll out improvements.' Accessibility advocacy has always been there, but now that we have a formal team in place, we are better positioned for the future."

Crystal Dynamics is also considering how the game will be presented to prospective players before launch; at E3 2019, the booth was made wheelchair accessible, taking into account hallways, queues, and door lips. Members of the accessibility team also gave an E3 presentation at ASL.

Another goal of the team was to normalize the representation of disabilities. There is an inhuman NPC who uses a wheelchair, for which accessibility specialist Cherry Thompson provided a mocap. And there seems to be a representation of being "in the crowd." Acknowledging that there are millions of people out there seems like the bare minimum, but sadly this is still an improvement.

Cerys was created specifically for Marvel's "Avengers," but several existing characters could and still might be used. But perhaps not as playable characters, but as actual meaningful representations. It may be difficult to design action game gameplay around a wheelchair user, but there are characters like Professor X who can fly around in a hoverchair and fire mind bullets at people.

Of course, not all obstacles are visible, and it is worth noting that Iron Man's life depends on a fancy magnet to prevent debris from entering his heart and killing him. But a visual, interactive medium like gaming should require more tangible representations that actually impact gameplay than it does now.

Still, it is great to hear Crystal Dynamics talk about their approach to accessibility. Nevertheless, we will have to wait a little longer to learn more about this work, which will be released on September 4.