Xbox is making it easier to find accessibility information for games, according to an announcement from the company at its Accessibility Showcase. Games in the Microsoft store will have accessibility feature tags, so players with disabilities can make sure games have the features they need before buying or downloading them. The tags are appearing in the store for members of the Xbox Accessibility Insiders League (XAIL) starting today and will eventually roll out to all Xbox users.

The tags address an issue commonly expressed by players with disabilities: they often have to do their own research to figure out which games they can play. Listing certain features in the store consolidates information that can be frustrating to track down, especially if it’s not available on developer websites or in reviews. Publishers will also be able to link to additional information from the store. While the tag system is starting in the Microsoft Store, Xbox says they’ll also start showing up on Xbox.com, the Xbox app on PC, and Xbox Game Pass apps in coming months.

Image: Xbox

Xbox says it plans to gather feedback from XAIL members over the next month before expanding the availability of the tags. Part of the fine-tuning for the tags involves determining specific sets of criteria that games need to meet in order to be labeled with each feature — a game with subtitles that can’t be resized, for instance, wouldn’t meet the bar for the subtitle options tag. The list of tags includes 20 features, like narrated game menus, input remapping, and single stick gameplay, and more could be added in the future based on feedback from players.

“We look at this as an opportunity to up-level the industry a little bit,” says Anita Mortaloni, Director of Accessibility at Xbox, who hopes the criteria for the tags will encourage more developers to build robust accessibility features into their games.

“As we continue on this journey, more and more titles will get [the tags] and hopefully inspire developers to look at those criteria and design their game with those in mind,” says Mortaloni, “because they know that once they publish, their titles can be tagged with those because they put that work in from the beginning.”

There’s also a new “Accessibility Spotlight” section in the store, with games in different categories based on the accessibility features they have, like audio or visual. Search results will be filterable by feature in coming months, according to Xbox.

Xbox also announced several other features that it says will launch soon:

• Quick settings, which allow people to toggle accessibility features on or off without leaving a game or app.
• Global color filters on Xbox Series X|S, for people with colorblindness to customize how colors are displayed across games, apps, and menus.
• Night mode with adjustable filters and brightness, controller and power button light dimming, and scheduling options.
• A free gaming accessibility fundamentals course for developers launching in Microsoft Learn in late October.

Watch the full Xbox Accessibility Showcase below:

Update October 1st, 5:30PM ET: Added comments from Anita Mortaloni.

Sony appears to be reintroducing an old concept for two of its newer Playstation 5 games — game trials. Sony will now let you try the PS5 versions of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut and Sackboy: A Big Adventure for free if you live in the United Kingdom, for six hours and five hours, respectively.

PlayStation owners first spotted Sony’s new offer via email. “Ever wanted to try some of the most popular games from PlayStation Studios before committing to the full game? Now you can,” the email reads. Sony says the games are redeemable on the PlayStation Store until October 28th at 11:59PM, and the trial starts as soon as you select “Download Trial” on console or “Add to Library” on the web. The Verge has reached out to Sony for more information, but if you’re in the UK, both the Death Stranding trial and Sackboy trial appear to already be live.

Image: @_wotta

Ten or more years ago, offering a demo for a big blockbuster game wouldn’t be too unusual, but it seems in the last decade, the rise of free-to-play systems, public betas, and a robust Let’s Play community has sort of driven the “free trial” to partial extinction. That’s started to change yet again — PC Gamer has a great piece trying to think through why — and it seems now Sony is dipping its toes in the water with two of its more recent first-party titles. Hopefully. that expands to more games and more regions soon.

Learning a new language on an Android device? If the language uses a different alphabet or employs accents that your primary language does not, you may need to add a new software keyboard to your phone.

Luckily, Google’s standard Gboard keyboard includes a plethora of language-related keyboards; at last count, it offered over 500 languages over 40 different writing systems. If you’ve already installed Gboard in the US, you’re likely already set up with US English. But it’s not difficult to add one or more new keyboards and quickly switch from one language to another. Here’s how to install and use one or more of the many languages available. (Note: this was tried out using a Pixel 3 phone and Android 12; your interface may vary.)

First, you need to get to the “Languages” page.

• One way is to open an app such as email or chat and tap in an area where you can type in order to bring up the keyboard.
• Tap on the settings icon (the one that looks like a gear) just above the keyboard. If you don’t see it, click on the arrow on the left just above the keyboard to bring up the toolbar.
• Select “Languages.”

You can also get to the page from your Android device’s main settings menu. From the settings:

• Select “System.”
• Select “Languages & input” > “On-screen keyboard” > “Gboard” > “Languages.”

Once you’ve reached the “Languages” page, you can add a new language:

• Tap on “Add keyboard” at the bottom of the page.
• Scroll to the language that you want to add and tap it. (It’s a long list, so you might save some time by using the search icon on the top right of the screen.) If you’ve been using a language-learning or other language-related app recently, the one you want may already be on top under “Suggested languages.”

• Depending on the language, you may be able to choose from a list of several types of keyboards on top of the screen. (For example, you may be able to opt for a QWERTY or Dvorak keyboard, or set handwriting options.) The most likely suggestion will be first, but you can swipe across to see others that are available. On the same page, under “Language settings,” the “Multilingual typing” option lets you choose to be given word suggestions from more than one language while you type. (Whether it’s available depends on which language you’re adding.)
• When you’re finished, tap the “Done” button. You’ll be brought back to the “Languages” page where you’ll see the new language listed. Tap the left arrow at the top left corner to leave the page.

You’ll now see the keyboard’s language named on the space bar. (If you enabled multilingual typing, you’ll see abbreviations of both language names.) In addition, there will now be a globe icon to the left of the keyboard instead of the emoji icon. (The emoji icon can now be accessed via a long press on the comma key.)

To change keyboards, tap on the globe; your keyboard will switch to the next in line. You can also long press on the space bar and select the language you want from the pop-up menu.

If you’re no longer using one of your languages and you want to remove it from the list:

• Long press the space bar to get the “Change keyboard” menu.
• Tap on “Language settings.”

Find the language you no longer need, and swipe to the left to remove it.

Update October 1st, 2021, 4:45PM ET: This article was originally published on January 3rd, 2020 and has been updated to allow for updates in the Android OS.

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

This week: lots of events and showcases! Nilay, Dieter, and Verge managing editor Alex Cranz start the show with coverage of all the devices announced at Amazon’s fall hardware event. Say hello to Astro — Alexa on wheels — along with a video chat gadget for kids, an Echo Show to hang on your wall, new wearable devices, and a whole lot more.

Google also held an event this week focusing on its core search functions with products like Google Maps, Google Lens, and of course, shopping and e-commerce. The crew discusses the important announcements.

There are more events covered in this week’s Vergecast! Verge senior reporter Alex Heath joins the show to discuss what happened at Code Conference this year — with interviews with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and many others.

You can listen to the full discussion here or in your preferred podcast player.

Stories discussed this week:

• Amazon’s fall hardware event 2021: rumors, news, and announcements
• Amazon’s race to create the disappearing computer
• Here’s the deluge of announcements from Amazon’s fall devices event
• Say hello to Astro, Alexa on wheels
• Amazon’s Astro cannot fetch your beer
• Amazon Astro is ‘terrible’ and will ‘throw itself down’ stairs, developers reportedly claim
• Amazon’s automotive efforts appear to be taking a pit stop
• Don’t be fooled — Amazon’s Astro isn’t a home robot, it’s a camera on wheels
• Remember when beta testing was free?
• Amazon’s new Echo Show 15 is meant to hang on your wall
• Amazon’s AZ2 CPU knows your face
• Amazon Glow is a video chat gadget with built-in games to keep kids engaged
• Amazon announces new wearable and services to try to make you fitter
• Amazon’s new Ring Alarm Pro combines a security system with an Eero router
• Blink’s first doorbell is finally released, four years later
• Ring Video Doorbells are finally getting package alerts
• Amazon takes on Nest with a $59.99 smart thermostat
• Google’s Search On fall 2021 event: news and announcements
• Google Search’s next phase: context is king
• Google expands shopping searches with Lens and in-store inventory checks
• Google Maps is making it easier to see wildfires and tree coverage
• Google Lens will soon search for words and images combined
• Google is using AI to help users explore the topics they’re searching for — here’s how
• Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos: ‘you cannot sue your way to the Moon
• Elon Musk: ‘we probably don’t need’ NDAs for Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta
• USB-C cables are getting new, confusing logos for faster 240W charging standard
• Nintendo categorically denies that a 4K Switch Pro is in development
• ‘Rife with sexism’: employees of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin describe ‘toxic’ workplace culture

NBC has an excellent story that takes a look at the trend of young adults attempting to buy prescription or recreational drugs from dealers on Snapchat — and ending up with fentanyl instead. The report tells the story from the perspective of several parents who have lost children and who suspect that they bought the pills using the popular chatting app. It also goes into how Snapchat is trying to deal with the problem and the difficulties that come with that moderation, both for parents and law enforcement.

Some parents suspect their children were trying to obtain painkillers to deal with various pains that weren’t being addressed by doctors or dentists, while some say their kids were trying to escape a world of emotional turmoil. In at least one instance, a parent suspects Snapchat facilitated a deal with a drug dealer who might only live a few blocks away.

None of that is to say that Snapchat is off the hook. One mother talks about how the suspected dealer is still advertising pills months later. Another parent says that it took Snap five months to provide info to law enforcement on one suspected dealer, who was eventually arrested. Snap told NBC that it works with the DEA to figure out how it should proactively scan for drug-related content, and that it deletes accounts it suspects belong to dealers. As NBC points out, though, it’s not difficult to create a new one.

The story raises questions about how to effectively moderate subjects related to drug use and the role of Snapchat in fentanyl’s wildfire-like spread. For that, it’s well worth the read.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

Since the dawn of time (around five or six months ago), people all over the world (Twitter users in the United States) have been puzzling over a very important question: why doesn’t the COVID-19 vaccine card fit in a wallet?

The card is too big for a standard wallet card slot and, as Amanda Mull pointed out in The Atlantic, still small enough that it’d be easy to lose. It’s like a reverse Goldilocks: just wrong. A handful of people speculated to Mull in August that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention might not have thought about the size of the cards all that much.

But it turns out they were at least thinking about the size of the card, according to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and sent to The Verge by a reader.

Email correspondence within the CDC shows that the agency was working on a vaccination card at the start of August 2020, months before the first COVID-19 vaccines would be authorized for use. On August 6, a staffer sent an email with a draft vaccination card attached. “Keep in mind that the card needs to be small enough to fit in a wallet,” the staffer wrote in an email. “Most cards I see are around 4” x 3.5” and are usually folded.”

It’s important to note here that wallet-sized things are much smaller than 4” x 3.5”. Wallet-sized photos are 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches, and standard credit cards are 2.125 inches by 3.37 inches.

But the key bit of info comes at the end of the sentence: “usually folded.” If the cards were 4 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall, folding them in half would make them 2 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall. That’s pretty close to the size of a standard credit card.

And that wasn’t even the final dimensions of the cards. The following Saturday, Operation Warp Speed, which headed the vaccine development process, asked the CDC to send over the vaccine card by the end of the day Monday. The CDC team went into overdrive to finalize the design by the deadline, and the same staffer sent over a print-ready version on Tuesday morning. In that email, the dimensions of the card were set at 4.25 inches by 3.5 inches.

Ok, time for more math. Folding that sized card in half would put the card at 2.125 inches by 3.5 inches, just about the same size as a credit card. Excellent! Perfect size to meet the goal of fitting in a wallet. All set, good to go.

But unfortunately, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Even if the CDC designed the card to be that size, it’s not the size the cards ended up at. My vaccine card measures in at 4 inches by 3 inches — too big to fit into a wallet. There’s nothing on the card to suggest folding it. And besides, folding it in half puts at 2 inches by 3 inches (so much math today). That’s smaller than a credit card and just small enough that it would slide down into a card slot and be difficult to dig out.

What happened in between these emails, which promised a card that would fit in wallets, and the vaccination campaign, which gave everyone cards that don’t easily fit in wallets? That’s where things get fuzzy, and it’s a mystery I still haven’t solved. The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment. Maybe someone just clicked the wrong button on a printer at some point. But maybe there’s a lesson here: the road to hell is paved with good intentions — and infuriatingly shaped cardstock.

Discord said Friday it’s going to sunset its Stage Discovery tool on October 4th, less than six months after it launched.

Rolled out in June, Stage Discovery was designed to help users find its social audio rooms called Stage Channels. It used machine learning to curate a list of channels a user might be interested in joining. Stage Channels have been a hit, Discord says, but it’s been keeping an eye on Stage Discovery to evaluate whether it’s meeting its goal of helping people find community.

“In listening to our communities and admins directly, we’ve learned that we still have work to do in regards to server onboarding and moderation,” Discord said in a release announcing the decision. “We’re going to take some time to rethink the Discovery aspect of Stages and how we can better build a place that best connects people to the communities most relevant to them.”

Discord says it will continue to invest in Stage Channels, adding several new features, including the ability to schedule events, extra screening capability, and improvements to its moderation tools “to help moderators on Discord keep things orderly and foster healthy engagement within their communities.”

More than a million Discord communities have run a Stage as of October 1st, the company added, using it to host ask-me-anything discussions, open-mic competitions, art conferences, and “discussions over what sorts of foods pineapple should be on” (editor note: definitely not pizza).

South Korean internet service provider SK Broadband is suing Netflix to pay for the increased network costs and bandwidth usage the streaming service’s content has drawn in South Korea, Reuters writes. The company cites Squid Game and D.P., two popular Korean Netflix dramas, as part of the cause.

SK Broadband’s demand for payment isn’t unfounded. A South Korean court sided with the ISP in June, The Korea Herald writes, suggesting Netflix was responsible for the demands its content puts on SK. Counter to Netflix’s request that it not be charged — since customers are the ones streaming, and they already pay for it — the court said the company has “the obligation of paying the price for the services to SK Broadband.” SK estimates the cost at 27.2 billion won (around $23 million) for 2020 alone, according to Reuters.

The Verge has contacted Netflix for comment. The company shared the following statement with TechCrunch in response to SK’s demands:

We will review the claim that SK Broadband has filed against us. In the meantime, we continue to seek open dialogue and explore ways of working with SK Broadband in order to ensure a seamless streaming experience for our shared customers.

Netflix’s success in Korea and in popularizing Korean film and television in the US has come to a head in the last year, and particularly in the last week, thanks to the surprise hit Squid Game. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said Monday that it was on track to be the company’s most popular show yet, and within four days of its release, it was already number one in the US on Netflix’s top ten chart.

Netflix strikes deals with service providers like Comcast in the US so that its connection gets priority treatment and, ultimately, better video quality. However, Netflix is in a different position now than when it agreed to pay Comcast — it already lost in court, and SK Telecom isn’t incentivized to make a deal while regulators consider a pending Big Cable merger — so even though it has more weight to throw around, it’s also already provided an example of why it might pay in the first place.

(Disclaimer: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, which owns The Verge.)

Google has stopped working on its Plex service, which aimed to let you do your banking through the Google Pay app. The service was supposed to let users sign up for checking or savings accounts offered by a variety of traditional banks that the user would then manage through the app. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google canceled the project due to a series of missed deadlines and because an executive who pushed for the project left the company.

Plex wasn’t meant to put Google in direct competition with banks, according to reports that came out before the company revealed the program and information from its official announcement. Instead, Google planned to partner with a variety of financial institutions that would have provided accounts without monthly or overdraft fees and without minimum balances. Like some other online banks, Google’s app would have let users set things like savings targets and automatic transfers. Some of the banks Google planned to partner with included Citi and SEFCU.

In an email on Friday, Google told The Verge that it still believes there’s demand from consumers for simpler ways to pay for things while shopping both online and in-person but that it will now be focusing on “delivering digital enablement for banks and other financial services providers rather than us serving as the provider of these services.” It’s possible, then, that we’ll see some of Plex’s features show up in Google Pay at some point — or we may just see Google continue work on its redesigned Google Pay app.

While there are still other options for people who want online banks with decent apps, it’s unfortunate to see that Google’s canceled this project. Not only would it have provided more traditional banks incentive to step up their mobile app game, but a big feature like this getting axed before its release doesn’t help with Google’s reputation for not sticking with products it launches. Still, it’s better that Google put a halt to it now if it wasn’t going to be committed to it — as a former Google Wallet debit card holder, I can say from personal experience that having to deal with changing how you pay for things is way more of a pain than, say, having to find a new way to read RSS.

A federal judge has administratively closed a $2 billion patent infringement lawsuit hydrogen trucking startup Nikola filed against Tesla in 2018, essentially pulling it off the Northern District Court of California’s docket because the two companies stopped responding. Nikola has until October 6th to show cause as to why the case should continue. Otherwise, the case of Nikola v. Tesla will be dismissed.

Nikola “has dropped the ball, and this 2018 action is languishing without explanation or apparent good cause,” Judge James Donato wrote in an order to show cause published this week. “Consequently, the case is administratively closed. Nikola is ordered to show cause in writing by October 6, 2021, why the case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute.”

Both Nikola and Tesla have apparently stopped responding to some of the court’s requests over the last few months. “On July 7, 2021, the Court asked the parties to schedule new tutorial and claim construction hearing dates. Neither side responded,” Donato wrote. “On September 2, 2021, the Court vacated further proceedings on claim construction for the lack of a response. As of the date of this order, neither party has advised the Court of proposed new hearing dates.”

Michael Rhodes, an attorney representing Tesla, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Nikola declined to comment. Attorneys for Nikola did not respond to requests for comment.

Nikola, for its part, has had to spend a lot of time and money putting out some major fires in the past year. Shortly after going public in 2020 — and almost immediately after General Motors announced a plan to take a minority stake in the startup — Nikola’s founder and former CEO Trevor Milton was accused of fraud by short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research. Among the allegations, Milton was accused of faking a video of Nikola’s truck driving down a road (it was really rolling down a hill).

Nikola performed its own investigation into the allegations (and found many of them to be true), but so did the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. Milton was indicted on multiple counts of fraud in July. He’s currently in federal custody but has maintained his innocence.

In the original complaint filed in March 2018, Nikola accused Tesla of infringing on patents the startup had filed for its hydrogen-powered big rig. Nikola tried to make the case that Tesla’s own Tesla Semi was using the same wraparound windshield, mid-entry doors, and aerodynamic fuselage, among other details. The startup also alleged that a Tesla recruiter had tried to poach Nikola’s chief engineer, and claimed this was evidence that Tesla was interested in Nikola’s designs. By allegedly stealing the design, Nikola said Tesla was causing “confusion in the market” and that letting the infringement continue would cost the startup more than $2 billion in sales. Tesla said at the time that it was “patently obvious there is no merit” to the lawsuit.

The two companies have spent much of the last three years arguing over which specific patents would make it to trial. (At one point last year, Tesla tried to argue that Nikola stole the design for its own truck from Croatian hypercar company Rimac.) In April 2020, Tesla lost a bid with the US Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate some of the patents in question. Milton tweeted at the time: “Two billion dollar lawsuit moving forward. We will defend our company’s IP no matter who it is.”