For a lot of games, accessibility means alternate control schemes and customisable controls, the addition of colour blind modes, larger text or audio aids. Some games don’t even have these. Obviously, accessibility in games is a work in progress, but Forza Horizon 5 is proving its commitment to making sure everyone can play by adding on-screen sign language interpreters.
“We’re constantly listening to the community to make Forza Horizon 5 an inclusive experience for everyone to enjoy,” said Mike Brown, Creative Director of Forza Horizon 5. “With this in mind, the team is excited to share we are also working on American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) support for cinematics in Forza Horizon 5. Coming soon, this feature will include a picture-in picture display near the bottom of the screen of an ASL/BSL interpreter during the cinematics in the game.”
Brown also announced some of the game’s other accessibility features, including a slower game speed for offline play, a high contrast mode, colour blind options, notification duration settings and lots of options for how subtitles display.
More significantly, there’s also a screen reader narrator that reads text, buttons and other elements out loud, text-to-speech and speech-to-text options so players can send and receive synthesized voice chat messages and the ability to disable moving backgrounds.
The developers worked with players from the Gaming & Disability community to create these features, which have been praised by the video game accessibility publication Can I Play That?
“We want everyone in the world to be able to experience our game, and with more than an estimated 400 million gamers with disabilities across the globe, it is vital that all players be able to tailor their gameplay in a way that works best for them,” said Brown.
Sign language interpreters are coming to Forza Horizon 5 in a future update — the developers explained why this feature won’t be in the game at launch, saying they needed to confirm all of the scripted content before they could start working with interpreters.
Unfortunately, there’s no word yet on whether the game will add Auslan interpreters. Popsugar Gaming has reached out to Playground Games and will update this post if we receive a statement.
