The 2021 Video Game Accessibility Awards has just unveiled its list of nominees with a wide, diverse spread of games being celebrated and no single title running away with dozens of nominations.
Several games received nominations in two categories, including Before Your Eyes, Unpacking, Halo Infinite, Far Cry 6, Back 4 Blood, It Takes Two, and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
The winners will be announced on March 12, 2022, on a livestream hosted by Accessibility Awards co-creators Steven Spohn and Alanah Pearce [Disclosure: Alanah Pearce is a former member of IGN's editorial content team].
The awards show was founded last year in partnership with Able Gamers to celebrate games that push the bar of accessibility and enable more players with diverse needs to enjoy games. The judging panel is made up entirely of disabled gamers, and its categories are based on accessibility guidelines created by Able Gamers as tools for game developers.
"My goal when I created the awards show was to celebrate developers who are making significant strides in accessibility, as a thank you to those studios, but also in the hopes that it would encourage other studios to get involved," Pearce said. "If there's an awards show for something and it has some visibility, I figure more studios are likely to try to strive to be included, thus raising the bar for accessibility across the board. We're also inherently educating any developers who might watch the show on what the different categories do, thus hopefully encouraging different accessibility needs to be considered earlier on in development cycles.
