Steam Accessibility

On the most popular video game digital storefront, how do disabled players find video games that they can actually play?

Project Overview

In the past five years, an increasing number of video game developers have started to design with disabled players in mind, including accessibility settings like colorblind modes and button remapping. But far before a disabled user can look at a game's Accessibility Settings screen, they have to figure out if a game they want to purchase has the right accommodations for them. I joined a team of 3 UX Researchers to conduct a usability study of Steam, the most popular digital storefront for video games, to find out how a storefront can communicate which games are accessible.

Software

Steam

Role

UX Researcher on 3-person team

Skills

Usability Studies
Quantitative Analysis
Mouse-tracking and case testing

Accessibility Philosophy

‘Gamers with disabilities’ covers a huge range of people with different disabilities and different accommodation needs. Anyone with a mismatch between a design and their abilities can benefit from accessibility accommodations. For that reason, we framed our research statement as thus: How do disabled users find games to purchase that have the right accommodations for their needs?

Research Question:

How do disabled users find games to purchase that have the right accommodations for their needs?

What accommodations does this particular user need in order to play?

What issues does the user encounter when navigating Steam in order to purchase a game they can play?

Where does a user look first to find information on a game’s accommodations?

Our Approach

We first created a user flow for the entirety of the Steam website to find out where users could possibly go to look for accessibility information. The most interesting section of the site is Game Curators.

Steam Curators: “Curators” recommend games based on their personal criteria. Though Curators pages are difficult to navigate to, disabled Curators pages were one of the only places we found actual info on accessibility.

User Flow for Steam- where do users look for accessibility info?

Figma File

Example user tasks:

"Imagine it's a Saturday afternoon, and you're in the mood for a new game. Find a page on Steam that includes info about accessibility settings."

"Your friend has heard good things about the screen reader settings in Forza Horizon 5. Find out if your friend can play this game."

Our Study

Participants

We screened for 5 participants based on whether they used accessibility settings when playing video games, such as controller remapping or subtitles.

Interviews

We asked our participants to complete a variety of tasks, such as finding a game with accessibility settings that they could use. ioGraphica was used as a mouse tracker to understand where participants were keeping their mouse throughout the session. After completing the tasks, we completed a semi-structured, 15 minute interview.

We used mouse tracking software to map where the most common places users would go to in order to find accessibility information. We found that the searchbar and the right sidebar were the most common places on any given screen.

Findings

Recommended Solutions

Inadequate Searchability

There are many context-dependent searchbars in Steam, and users weren't able to use any of them to search for accessibility info.

Add Accessibility to Existing Searchable Tag System

Buried Information

The only reliable source of accessibility information (The Curators section) wasn't designed for that process and was buried behind a login screen.

Standardize and Require Accessibility Info on Game Pages

Reliance on User-Made Content

Some users had created robust info in the Curators section for some disabilities (like color-blindness), but it was sporadic and difficult to find.

Add Vetted Accessibility Curators to Main Game Page

Conclusion

Making accessibility settings available and understandable to users before they purchase requires several systems to be redesigned: how game devs or expert users gather it, how Steam displays it, and how users search and find it. Our usability study showed user's thought process for accessing accessibility information and generated insights that will vastly improve the usability of Steam for all users, not just disabled ones.