Featured in the 2026 Access-Ability Summer Showcase!

Hi all and welcome!

Short Introduction for the new people:

Hey, I'm Rawb! I'm a queer indie dev from Pittsburgh. I've been an artist my whole life, making comics, animation, and videogames. I've got some of my older work on my website here: http://rawbherb.art

With that out of the way...

The 2026 Access-Ability Summer Showcase

The Tennis Academy had the honor of being featured in the Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2026! It's a yearly livestreamed event that highlights accessible games, and I talked a bit about my plans to make The Tennis Academy completely accessible to blind players. I highly recommend checking out the event if you haven't, there's some great games in here, including 3 that are published by the folks at my old job, Whitethorn Games, and plenty of blind-accessible games. If you're a disabled gamer looking for recommendations, or interested in how we can make games for everyone, take a look!

You can also find Audio Described and Sign Language versions on Laura Kate Dale's Youtube.

Here's the Accessibility Trailer for the Tennis Academy that premiered at the end of the event:

I have to thank Laura again for her dedication to accessibility in games and putting on this showcase every year, and for the honor of having my game join a very good roster of games. And thank you to SightlessKombat for the very kind introduction to the game, I was blown away and almost cried!!

And I'm grateful to all of you that are here now! It took 2 years on Steam to get to 600 wishlists, and in 2 days we've more than doubled that amount, that's incredible. I'll do my best to make a game you'll enjoy!

I covered some of the planned accessibility features already in the Accessibility Trailer, but I'd like to take a moment to give you a full rundown of all the features I have on my to-do list.

Planned Accessibility Features:

About half of these are already implemented, but here's a full list of what's planned.

Blind / Colorblind / Low Vision:

• Text-to-Speech in menus and dialogue

• Virtual Cane - TTS will read out objects in overworld

• NavMenu - Warp to important NPCs and exits

• Sound cues during matches and "Thud" sound when bumping into things

• Directional sound

• Audio Descriptions of each environment

• Colorblind settings for different types of colorblindness

• High contrast mode

Other Graphics:

• Adjust text size

• Speed up or slow down dialogue

• Change HUD size

• Standard Brightness/Contrast settings

• Window mode / Resolution settings for PC players

Hearing / Sound:

• Adjust volume of music, sound effects, "speech" effects, Text-to-Speech, and All

• Sound is not needed to play the game

• Sound cues during matches

Motor:

• Run Button: Hold to run or press once to toggle run

• Rumble on/off

• Assist: Auto-run to the ball and/or auto-hit the ball in matches

• Slow game speed in matches

• Pause game when ball is in hit range during matches

• One-handed control mode

• Motion sickness options

Controls:

• Remap controls for controller / keyboard

• Adjust sensitivity of controls

Difficulty:

• Easy / Balanced / Hard modes

• Hint system

• Add more legal ball bounces before ball is taken out of play

• Skip Match button

• Story-Only mode to skip all matches entirely

Story:

• PG Mode

• Story Summary - Recap your progress so far in case you take a break and can't remember what happened

And More?

Let me know if there's something you'd like me to add I haven't mentioned!

(I will go ahead and update the main steam page with these - it's been a couple of years since I've updated that!)

Why Accessibility is so Important:

Chances are if you're a disabled gamer or have ever tried to play a game with a broken arm, you already know this, but I want to take a moment to iterate why it's important to me we make games accessible. It's so more people can play! Everyone deserves to play games. Videogames are a great source of entertainment, inspiration, helping us through tough times, and everyone deserves to experience that. It's also important to remember that any of us are capable of becoming disabled. Unfortunately, accessibility is often an after-thought to many developers and studios. I'm just one small dev, but I'm hoping I can prove something to AAA studios by demonstrating that a solo dev can make a complex RPG completely playable by blind players!

What You Can Do Now:

That's all I have for today, but if you'd like to immerse yourself more in this game, I have a few directions I can point you in.

First: Join our Discord! We're still in the very early stages of growing a community, and I don't anticipate it becoming "poppin" until the game is ready for playtesters, but this is the best place to get updates on the game, ask questions, and give feedback!

Link: https://discord.gg/76chERbdzR

Next, I have a couple of other blogs on Steam that may interest you:

Read my stance on AI: view Meet the composer, Piero:

view

I'll probably do a blog on characters and lore at some point too!

Ok, that's really all now. Thanks for being here, stay gaming, and take care!

-Rawb 💖