Thank you for listening Apple

So wonderful to see powerful switch access make its way to iOS7, thanks to Apple listening to the likes of Christopher Hills, Kate Aherne, Will Wade, Includification and others. Gives me great hope for a more accessible future. Will Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam and others follow suit I wonder and make the world a more equal place.

A World First for Game Accessibility

17 September 2013, this fantastic news cribbed direct from the GDAA site: Australia is leading the world in making games accessibility a priority. The latest demonstration of commitment to enabling a wider cross section of the community be catered for when playing games is the inaugural Accessibility Award announced by the Game Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA) as part of the 2013 Australian Game Developer Awards. This follows on from the inclusion of accessibility considerations by Film Victoria and Screen Australia when allocating funding to game development projects.


Accessibility in this context means mainstream games that make an effort to avoid unnecessarily excluding people with motor, cognitive, hearing, speech or vision impairments. For more information see Game Accessibility Guidelines.com. Screen Australia’s Investment Manager, Justin Halliday said “Accessibility was one of the key issues raised by the industry during the consultation process for Screen Australia’s new Games Fund. Screen Australia and state agencies like Film Victoria recognise that accessibility in gaming brings some huge benefits, not only the obvious economic benefits of being able to reach wider audiences, but also quality of life, allowing access to culture, entertainment, and socialising for many people who have limited recreation opportunities. “

Accessibility advocates and experts the world over are excited by the news that Australia is not only financially supporting, but also recognising excellence in the field of game accessibility.

“The International Game Developers’ Association (IGDA) Accessibility Special Interest Group (SIG) Co-chair, Michelle Hinn, welcomed the award’s inclusion in the Australian Game Developer Awards, to be held in Melbourne on 22 October. “The Accessibility SIG has been lobbying for inclusion of accessibility categories in industry awards for at least 8 years now. There have been so many “almost…but thanks but no thanks” roads we have been down and I am just simply over the moon that you guys are picking up on an award for this!”

Another Accessibility advocate and expert, Ian Hamilton from the UK, who visited Australia late last year, also pledged his support for these latest initiatives. “From Team Bondi to The Voxel Agents, Global Game Jam to the Film Victoria and Screen Australia funding programmes, Australia has often been at the forefront of accessibility in the games industry. The government and industry support and guidance through the funding programmes in particular has resulted in a local industry with an unsurpassed level of knowledge and understanding about the barriers people can face and how to open up access to as wide an audience as possible.

The accessibility award is a natural next step. Awards have been given in the past by individuals and charities such as AbleGamers in the USA, but this AGDA category is, to my knowledge, the first time that the economic and life changing value of accessibility has been recognised in this way by an internal industry body, which is a really significant and exciting landmark in game accessibility.” Said Hamilton.

Nominations for the Accessibility Award are open until 30 September 2013 come from within the video game development sector and a panel of experts in the field then decide on the winners. For the accessibility award the panel will include international authorities in the field including Hamilton and representatives from the IGDA Accessibility SIG.

The Australian Game Developer Awards include the categories of: Game of the Year, Studio of the Year, Excellence in Art, Excellence in Design, Excellence in Audio, Technical Excellence, Innovation Award, and the Accessibility Award. The awards night will be held on Tuesday 22 October in conjunction with 2013 Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP) conference at the Melbourne Conference and Exhibition Centre 21-23 October.

For further information contact

Giselle Rosman
Game Developers’ Association of Australia
gisellerosman@gdaa.com.au
0406631926

Game Accessibility Super Lucky Dip

Some really wonderful game accessibility news has stacked up in my in-box lately. Too little time to do it all justice but here's the links:

Able Gamers open their first game accessibility lab, where people can visit and try out accessibility gear. You can see a short video clip on the lab here (in German thanks to Sandra Uhling). I hope this, along with the SpecialEffect Centre is just their first of many more to surface (thanks to Techi Myoko for tip-off).

Wii-U New Super Luigi U "brings accessibility to a nearly blind girl."

Open Source Hardware: Copy and Paste Empowerment. Great article from Caleb Kraft at the EE Times.

Subtitles on Steam: Wonderful to see Kristina Barber's campaign for steam to list what games have subtitles greated with what seems like success. It's not perfect, but it's definitely a significant step forward (thanks to Ian Hamilton for the update).

SpecialEffect Windows phone app is launched for keeping up to speed with much of their news. And a glimpse of the sculpture created by Alex Kostov using just his eyes.

Beyond the call of Duty

SpecialEffect ambassador Shaz Hossain sums up what SE means to him in 2 minutes, with voice over from Cassie Smith. Wish I could make videos this slick and to the point. See SpecialEffect at this year's EuroGamer by the way.

On an AT geekery level, I think this set-up uses a Traxsys/Penny and Giles Roller Plus Joystick (recognised by a PC as a mouse device) with switch interface, an additional Crick USB Switch Interface, a mix of switches, a Maxess Switch Tray, an arcade stick of some type and Cronus Device to patch this up from PC across to PS3.

Somebody Stole My Thunder

Control your Xbox with the Tecla Shield for iOS

To a limited extent, it's possible to control your Xbox using an iOS device and accessible switch and/or joystick interface. Based on Microsoft's Xbox Smart Glass for iOS devices and using the excellent Tecla Shield iOS interface this is a very nice addition to game console accessibility.

This is no where near as powerful or versatile as a JoyToKey, PC and Cronus device set-up, but it's certainly a lot smaller, with a more attractive interface, and points the way forward.

Many thanks to Will Wade for the tip.

Mole Hammers

Another colourful and fun one or two-player on-line one-switch game from Finland's Oivoi. The really nice thing about Mole Hammers is that in two-player mode the moles stay up until a player takes their turn. So slow reactions are not an issue here if the two-players are evenly matched.