It’s been awhile since I’ve combed the Internet for video game accessibility information, so tonight I’ve been doing just that.

We’ve talked about the challenges many disabled people face when playing video games. I’ve mostly looked at it from the perspective of actual games.

Hardware is another issue. Think about how far controllers have come along in the past decades. Looking at just the systems I’ve owned — the Atari 2600 had one button and a joystick; the Nintendo Entertainment system had four buttons and a directional pad; the Sega Genesis, 5 buttons and a pad. Then came the PlayStations and Xboxes, which threw in trigger buttons, bumpers, more buttons, more thumbsticks…you get the picture.

Imagine the challenges people with physical disabilities face with such complex controllers.

I was just visiting the wonderful AbleGamers website (a site I talked about at length last year in a series of posts including an interview with Steve Spohn), and read some interesting news on the topic of accessible video game controllers.

Evil Controllers and the AbleGamers Foundation jointly unveiled the Adroit Switchblade, a remarkable assistive technology device that allows massive amounts of customization for Xbox gaming or, with an additional plugin, the Playstation or PC. It comes with a pair of thumbsticks, plus you can use its 19 ports to set up a slew of switches to perform whatever actions you need.

Being new to the subject, I was still a little bit unsure of how this all worked. Joystiq posted a video of AbleGamers’ Marc Bartlet explaining the Switchblade. It’s a little hard to hear the audio at times, but it’s worth a viewing.

It’s always great when there are accessibility strides in the world of video games. Hopefully the Switchblade makes it easier for more disabled people to enjoy the world of gaming.

Tags: ablegamers.com, adroit switchblade, assistive technology, evil controllers, playstation, Video Games, xbox

I think I may have mentioned once or twice that it’s incredibly difficult staying committed to blogging. A couple weeks of being “too busy” between work and home life…followed by a couple more. Next thing you know, it’s been months.

Needless to say, this place has collected some dust.

But anyway…I’m back and hopefully to stay.

I was searching around the Web for interesting news in the world of video game accessibility, and found a fascinating video. It’s of a gamer who broke his neck and, as a result, is paralyzed from the neck down. He has limited usage of his arms and no movement in his fingers. Even so, he has found the means to effectively play video games.

Check it out:

If you head over to Brashant Entertainment – Video Game Experts, you can get a deeper explanation.

Watching this drives home a couple things. First and foremost, it’s absolutely amazing to see how people overcome disabilities. Before I got into this accessibility thing, I wouldn’t have imagined someone with this man’s degree of paralysis playing a shooter video game….and playing it very well!

It’s inspiring, to say the least.

Tags: disability, modern warfare 2, paralysis, Video Games

I normally focus on web site accessibility, but after one of my favorite video games of 2009 recently won an award for its consideration to disabled players, it got me thinking about the subject.

First off, kudos to Dragon Age: Origins from Bioware (easily my favorite game maker) for earning 2009 Accessible Game of Year, from the web site Ablegamers.com. The roleplaying epic scored a 9.8 out of 10.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that despite web accessibility and video games being two of my greatest interests, I hadn’t really given the concept of the two together much thought.

Without having done a lot of research on the subject (yet!), my initial hunch is that a lot of game developers probably don’t pay a lot attention to disabled gamers. I hope that’s an unfair assumption.

Some may say, “How can you make a computer or video game accessible for everybody? There are just some things you can’t do if you have a disability.” Some games more than others can’t be made universally usable.

But as I think about it, there are more than just subtitles that can make games easier to use for those with sight, hearing or physical limitations. And like web surfing, there’s no doubt a vast range of disabled people who love playing computer and video games. If something happened to my sight, hearing or dexterity, my love for games wouldn’t wane.

Some things that come to mind that are similar between web browsing and game playing:

In short, while you cannot make all games universally playable for all people regardless of limitations, there are plenty of ways to up the accessibility. And like web accessibility, many of these features are useful even if you don’t have a disability.

For example, I don’t have a hearing impairment, but I always play games with subtitles on. In part, I play games at night when my wife is asleep and I don’t want the noise bothering her. Also, I just plain enjoy having the text to read along with the audio.

All I know is that Dragon Age: Origins is a phenomenal game, and they found numerous ways to address some of the issues above as well as others.

I’m not about to change this blog to “the art of web and game accessibility”, but this is a topic that I’m going to further explore.

Tags: bioware, computer games, dragon age, game accessibility, Video Games