Last week, Valve added in a feature that lets you browse Steam via a multitude of different accessibility tags. This week, it’s making Steam itself more accessible! Or more specifically, Steam in Big Picture Mode, and on devices running SteamOS, i.e. the Steam Deck of Lenovo Legion Go S. Valve shared word of the new accessibility setting in a blog post, though for now these are just a part of a beta update, so not everyone will have them just yet.
First of all, there’s UI scaling, specifically for making text bigger or smaller. There’s also a high contrast mode which makes any text, buttons, and icons on Steam stand out more from the background. A small thing that won’t be noticed by many but will make all the difference to those that do is that there’s a reduce motion option now too. This one stops certain animations, affects, and transitions to “reduce on-screen movement.”
You’ll also find a colour filter (this one’s just for SteamOS), which has three options currently: grayscale, which turns everything black and white, invert brightness, which inverts your display brightness in a “color-preserving manner (i.e., green buttons stay green)”, and invert colours, which quite simply inverts the screens colours. This all applies to both SteamOS itself, and any games you’re playing.
Lastly, also just on SteamOS, there’s a screen reader function which will “read out the item you’re currently focused on, letting you adjust pitch, speed and volume.” All really useful stuff!
It’s nice to see an update like this because while games themselves having accessibility features is really important, the hardware we play them on having them is too. I have no difficulties with reading smaller text a majority of the time, but on smaller screens or if I’m far away it can be a bit of a pain, so I welcome the UI scaling in particular.
Valve also said that they’d love to hear from any players with disabilities as to what they can do for you, linking to a post in an accessibility thread where you can leave feedback.
