How EA Sports FC 26 Avoided Being A "Cautionary Tale" And Made Accessibility History
Electronic Arts’ accessibility innovations span a variety of genres. From Apex Legends’ ping system to Dead Space’s content warning and censorship options, disabled players have access to a variety of tools to make games work better for them across EA’s library. On September 26 of last year, EA released EA Sports FC 26, the latest entry in the football (soccer) series, complete with a bevy of new accessible designs and options. And the disabled community noticed.
Within several months of its release, FC 26 secured nominations for awards in shows like The Game Awards’ Innovation in Accessibility Award and IGN’s The Best Accessible Games of 2025, and it won at the Game Accessibility Conference’s AAA Excellence and Greatest Accessibility Innovation awards. Through drawing inspiration from past EA titles (as well as the gaming industry at large), discussing the occasional difficulties of creating accessible innovations, and exploring their future hopes for accessibility across the industry, the developers behind FC 26 created one of the publisher’s most accessible games to date. Here’s a closer look at just what makes this feat so impressive, and how the team behind FC 26 accomplished it.
Looking to Others
Accessibility is frequently built upon the successes and failures of other games, both internally and across other external studios. It’s not uncommon to see an accessible setting or design take inspiration from a different game, different genre, or even a previous entry in a series. Paul Parsons, gameplay producer for EA Sports FC, and Morgan Baker, accessibility development director at EA, explained that this back-and-forth is part of how studios create a “comprehensive review” of features and push accessibility forward.
