Echoing feedback from an archived thread.
Games are for everyone, and I appreciate the platform and tools that itch.io has provided us to find, discuss, and distribute indie games. But we can do better with how we categorize accessible games.
For example, 11 of the most recent 24 games tagged as blind-friendly (that I could play) make no attempts to be friendly. This indicates a lack of awareness of the developers who’ve self-selected that tag, and it wastes the time of folks searching for a game they can actually perceive and enjoy. Currently I’m reporting these titles as miscategorized, but it shouldn’t be the job of users like me to clean them up.
Awareness of accessibility is a huge systemic issue. I’ve done my best to create accessible games and advocate accessibility to my friends and colleagues. But are there any additional steps that itch.io could take beyond linking to gameaccessibilityguidelines.com to promote awareness and prevent miscategorization?
Ultimately the best solution would be a cultural change where we’re more informed as content creators so we can police ourselves. A solution with more moderation from itch.io staff would be a drain on their time and resources. So I think a little more advocacy from them could go a long way here.
One suggestion could be to move accessibility tags from the Classification page to their own page (e.g. /game/accessibility/{id}). This page could provide more space to call out criteria or provide links to best practices for each tag. For example, information about the selected tags could be dynamically injected into the page. By encouraging developers to learn more about their tags, they may think twice about whether certain tags actually apply.
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.