Disabled users across six major platforms gained concrete 2021 improvements — the direct beneficiaries of each company's individual roadmap, including Apple's Watch and captioning work previewed ahead of its fall rollout.
Second-order effects
Feature parity becomes the competitive mechanism: once one company ships capabilities like Apple's live captioning tool across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, rivals face pressure to match rather than differentiate downward.
Shared research infrastructure emerges as the efficient path — the Speech Accessibility Project model lets companies pool speech data they cannot build alone, shifting investment from solo feature work to consortium membership.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, accessibility consolidates from per-product patches into platform-level engineering discipline — the trajectory Google started when it standardized reviews instead of relying on advocates flagging problems late.
That standardization, plus pooled datasets for impaired speech, positions AI voice assistants to serve users they currently fail, feeding directly into the assistant and foundation-model competition now reshaping all five companies.
The trend: Accessibility at Big Tech firms is shifting from advocacy-driven fixes to standardized processes, cross-company research consortia, and AI-era capability races.
“Twitter only set up its two accessibility teams last year, after an embarrassing launch of Voice Tweets ... Since then, though, the company has shown noteworthy improvement [and] it has managed to make significant changes.” Given the mess that was 2021, I'll settle for that! htt…
Keeping accessibility in our minds when websites and products are designed is good UX for everybody. Glad to see improvements across many of the things we use, but plenty more needs to be done.. #accessibility #ux #progress https://www.engadget.com/...
@TabGames3 ... That's good feedback. We work really hard to avoid being too prescriptive for content design decisions since every VRC adds burden (to devs, QA, etc.), but providing a system-level palette of user-selectable options is becoming clearly more attractive.
@mattconte ... I'd definitely use it if it was available. Right now, I have a short series of questions I ask the user in order to chose their default settings but being able to just retrieve that info would be really useful and would make the experience smoother for users too I …
@TabGames3 @benz145 Going back to Ben's post: I agree for first-timers or noobs in VR, the consequences and choices should be made clear. But this is why I think platforms are dropping the ball. I've been VR-ing since 2016 and it's annoying that I have to tell every single game w…
@TabGames3 @benz145 There should be user-settings and preferences at a platform level (Steam or Oculus), so that each game is pre-populated with your default preferences, so you don't waste time every game doing it differently. STOP REINVENTING THE WHEEL. Platform makers @oculus …
@TabGames3 ... Devs are crying out for some kind of standardization. There's so much redundant work being hoisted on developers to account for user prefs. Users can't search for games that suit their playstyle. Many won't buy TP-only games, or vice-versa.
@BattleAxeVR ... The grammar of VR is still taking shape, and we leverage our VRCs to encourage best practices and eventually look to make them requirements, but it takes time to strike the right balance. But your concerns are heard.
@hvent90 Rate of acceleration and decel can matter. So can top speed, changing altitude (stairs, ramps, stepping on/off small objects that change your height), near-field scenery, hand vs. head-relative movement. Even use of colors/brightness can matter for flicker depending upon…
@BattleAxeVR ... And if you have any examples of a platform that has handled this really well at the system level, let us know! We have a bunch of good examples of individual titles that have nailed it on our platform, but agreed that we should do better.
@benz145 I just recently added a system in to my game where it asks the player to choose between a Comfort mode and Legs mode (hopefully I come up with a better name for this at some point, lol). And then sets everything up accordingly. https://twitter.com/...
@BattleAxeVR ... Additionally, we have been discussing internally recently building comfort / accessibility features into the OS (teleport, snap turns, control prefs, etc.) and encouraging devs to plug into those. So we are thinking about all of this!
@TabGames3 ... I'm talking about sitting / standing, smooth locomotion vs teleport, left-handed vs right-handed, head/body/waist-oriented movement, which stick you prefer to do what (some prefer right-stick for movement and left-stick for turning. Independently of their dominant …
@BattleAxeVR ... Accessibility is a major effort on our team. We have VRCs that address similar concerns. They are currently recommended and not required, but we strongly encourage developers to follow them to reach the broadest audience possible. https://developer.oculus.com/ ..…
@benz145 Yes! I've also recently noticed there is a shocking lack of awareness/onboarding when it comes to VR comfort options, terminology, and movement mechanics. Not a good thing for the industry.
@benz145 Does anyone know why I don't get any nausea running around in Onward, but I quickly get motion sickness doing the same in Rec Room or Township Tale?
@chetfaliszek You're probably keep FB at arms length but we bucked the trend and went for Node Based Teleport for our recent Cover Shooter. https://twitter.com/...
@chetfaliszek I think im going to have to give up on VR soon, Im having a hard time playing these days due to eye strain/fatigue. If you feel sick you should stop immediately, otherwise you will feel even worse if you continue, and it can last all day.
Regarding this... devs can also help significantly with awareness. Most VR games present comfort options like an inconsequential preference. Instead, comfort-focused options should specify something like ‘Comfortable for most people’ so users know *why* to choose one over another…
If you start feeling ill playing VR - stop the session. It doesn't get better, you don't ride it out, there is no other side... it is a spiral down. I am super susceptible but can still play all the time because I am careful and if it is coming on I stop. https://twitter.com/...
PSA for new to VR people: For thumbstick locomotion games there are usually two (or more) options, head based movement and hand based movement - choose whichever makes more sense. Also if you use hand based you should reconsider your life choices and why you're so wrong https://t…
@chetfaliszek False. I had terrible “VR Legs” for well over a year until I toughed it out and disabled smooth turning. I got motion sickness constantly, slowing pushing through he motion sickness bit by bit helped me so much
ℹ️ PSA for new to VR people. The ‘teleport’ or ‘blink’ options for moving in VR games aren't there just for the hell of it, they're there because they can prevent motion sickness. If you're feeling dizzy, take a break and switch to teleport next time you play.