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.

DIY Solder-less Assistive Tech Foot Switches

The picture above is of a Skull Tattoo pedal adapted to connect to standard switch adapted equipment. This one takes nothing more than the pedal, a 3.5mm mono plug, a knife and a 5g pouch of SUGRU to create. No soldering required. Pop over to OneSwitch.org.uk's DIY guide for step-by-step help.

The costs using SUGRU broke down for me as £8.23 for the Skull pedal and £6.40 for the Acrylic pedal (see below). This was assuming I purchased a £6.50 three pack of 5g SUGRU.

Potentially reducing costs further would be to glue or solder the connections, with the cost going down to £4.98 or £3.15. In SUGRU's favour, the former solution is cleaner and removes the need for soldering.

Next on the agenda, is a DIY solder-less versatile switch and joystick interface for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, which you can glimpse below.

PS3 Head Tracker

I've been slow in reposting this amazing creation that I first learnt about at The Controller Project site. It enables the user, Steve, to play PS3 games using a head-tracker and a single switch. The later iteration takes the PC screen and mixes it with the PS3 output. Brilliant! One day we'll see this as a standard console/computer option for games.

Lucky Dip

A huge swathe of interesting potential access developments have washed up in my e-mail lately. Too many to do justice to so here's another lucky dip post.

Teaching Switch Skills Beyond Cause and Effect: Brilliant to see Kate Aherne back blogging. This is one of her more recent invaluable posts.

London South Bank University Enable Gaming event: 31 Aug 2013 10:00-19:00 "Enable Gaming is inviting you to share your dev expertise with London Southbank University (LSBU) students and mentor them as they make one-button games in a day for Lifelites projects in children’s hospices. Enable Gaming is a project between Lifelites and LSBU." Via Siobhan Thomas on IGDA GASIG list.

Vibration developments: ViviTouch HD seeking to bring a wider range of feel to games than just rumbles. Via Sandra Uhling on the IGDA GASIG list.

Hybrid Braille: Thailand Association of The Blind's Storybook [and font] for All Eyes. Via Techni Myoko.

Kinect sensor modified for wheelchair gaming. Hello Microsoft! That would be great for the new Kinect, please.

teletextart.com

Space Madness

Space Madness and the History Eraser Button from Ren and Stimpy.

Playstation 3: Two Switch Accessibility

With the set-up above, two accessibility switches are all that are needed to browse the Playstation 3 menu system. From there you can freely switch between the likes of the BBC iPlayer, Netflix, photo albums, MP3s, the Playstation store, the internet and a range of one and two-switch playable games.

The set-up requires a PS3 connected via a Cronus adapter to a Windows PC, running JoyToKey and Bullseye with special profiles that you can download here. Two switches are connected to a C-SID (Button 1 and Button 2) but any USB connected joystick should work just fine too.

Really excited by some of the games that are now possible to make one or two-switch accessible: Poker Night 2, Pool, Golf, Fighting games, Dance mat games, Driving games, Pinball, sand-box exploration games, maybe point and click adventures and more.

Also pleased to find out that PSone CD based games work on all PS3s, so brilliant one-switch playable titles such as Destruction Derby, Um Jammer Lammy and Fluid are also back on the cards. More to follow...

Switch Gaming on iOS (At Last!)

Brilliant videos from Colin McDonnell, and brilliant implementation of one-switch access so it seems. Looking forward to trying this out myself. Well done Colin and well done Apple! Seems there's a switch gaming revolution brewing (see my next post too).

A History of Speech Synthesisers

Klatt's Last Tapes, by Lucy Hawkins, is a wonderful BBC 4 documentary on the history and impact of Speech Synthesisers. My first experiences of speech synthesisers were in amusement arcades: Bally's 1979 Gorgar "Me...Got...You", and Stern's Berzerk "Humanoid Chicken. Fight like a robot". It seemed so exotic and incredible to me at the time. A machine... that talks.

So impressed too by the work at Cereproc (which you can hear used in my Electronic Soup Podcasts) seeking to give people back their own voice if they loose it later in life. And the work to create voices that mature with the person to whom they are attached can't come soon enough.

Via: Duncan Edwards of Trabasack on Twitter.

Best Xbox 360 One Hand Solution to date

Jeff Humm recently bought a One Hand Controller from me, but struggled with the shoulder buttons (marked on the PS2 controller as L1, L2, R1 and R2). He tracked down a nice solution for his Xbox 360 for an extra £60 approx. on top of the price of the controller.

The hardware needed is: One One Handed Controller from me at OneSwitch for £55 plus postage (also easily available from eBay). A PS2 to Xbox 360 adapter from eBay (as pictured above) for about £11. An XCM Re-Mapper device from eBay which are currently going for about £50. There's no need to connect an official Xbox 360 JoyPad with this set-up either, which is a boon. You can do the same with PS3 as seen in this SpecialEffect video using the XCM Swapper.

With this set-up you can move the controls around to make a more comfortable/possible one-handed playing arrangement. If only all games allowed you to reconfigure controls from the off, Jeff could have saved himself £60. So many disabled gamers are penalised in this way. Seems unfair to me.

Plea for Near Future Assistive Technology Help

"I have Motor Neuron Disease and my arms are paralysed. I use computers via my eye gaze system and foot switches. However, since MND is a progressive condition, I need to look forward to when I may be reduced to using only my eyes or even brain waves. Therefore I need a way to interface my computer to things like my wheelchair, which are controlled by switches.

I was wondering if it would be possible for something like an arduino to emulate a switch. That is, to connect up a suitable jack plug and have the arduino send the appropriate electrical signals to emulate button click or hold. The arduino in turn could be controlled by programs running on a PC. I have a software background so could manage the programming, but I am pretty ignorant when it comes to electronics."

This plea above was e-mailed to me from Steve Thomas (who writes a number of blogs including the mighty-fine l337 epic blog with a MMORPG focus). Something like that might be so useful for so many reasons, perhaps Raspberry Pi or Arduino powered. Perhaps a little like the iOS Switchamajig. Perhaps taking a lead from BLEduino. If anyone can help, please get in touch.

DIY Accessible TV Remote with Huge Buttons

The very nice adaptation above was created for the quadriplegic brother of Bradley Boggs in California. He riffed off the DIY Switch Accessible Doro Learning Remote guide to create something unique.

The problem for his brother was that he couldn't change the channels on his TV for about 10 hours or so at night. Problem solved. Great work!

Excitim

Excitim has undergone a complete site redesign, and it's looking very nice for it. They've a wide range of accessible toys and gadgets, including a 10 megapixel camera, bubble machines, remote control cars and many sensory toys. A really professional and friendly UK company that I highly recommend.

Adapted 4 All: iOS 7 Switch Access

Colin McDonnell of the superb Adapted 4 All, has recently posted the most illuminating video yet of iOS 7 switch access. Looking so good. I think Apple are about to win me over. But can it enable switch play of any/many games?

UPDATE from Colin: "I have had a blast at angry birds, checkers and 4 pics one word and they are pretty because they are not time sensitive. Candy crush is not so easy." I'm won over!

FingerTip Controllers (1982)

After finding the top picture whilst researching for my ever-so-slow book, and knowing it to be the work of game controller accessibility pioneer Ken Yankelevitz (see the video above 1min 26 in), I was curious to know if the unloved set-up still exists. I would love to get hold of it.

Thanks to "Moonsweeper" on the AtariAge forums, I've got the name of the "FingerTip Controllers" and a tip to trawl through early US video gaming magazine "Electronic Games". This proved easy to do thanks to a brilliant archive at Digital Press. From October 1982 onwards I tracked down adverts for Ken's controllers and a fascinating historic article from Diane Yankelevitz in the February 1983 edition.

Skoog Orchestra

Chuffed to have received this Skoog related press release drop into my e-mail box recently sharing developments in Lancashire. It's so good to see the dream for the Skoog as an equalising force in Orchestras and music creation being realised.

Sony PS4 Giant Controller Accessibility

I'm getting the impression that Sony's grasp of the needs of disabled players remains non-existent. Each Playstation generation sees additional complexity added to their controllers (see the video above and imagine how someone with Cerebral Palsy might get on with it). This is disabling an ever widening net of people who have alternative access needs. The controllers would be fine, if there was a push to offer support for simpler control schemes. There isn't.

Interestingly, Mark Cerny (author of classic track-ball game Marble Madness and key PS4 system master-mind) recently spoke enthusiastically of a giant PS4 controller being used to get across the barriers typically faced by young players who could not reach the shoulder buttons. This was handed to the developers of "Knack" which aims to be Sony's "on-ramp [game] to the world of console gaming". Is this how far we've travelled? Atari worked that out in 1983 with their Kids Controller. If this is how far accessibility has progressed at a console developer level, then I truly shake my head in despair. Pitiful. What about all the disabled players out there, Sony?

Another Place

Another Place by Antony Gormley. Such a beautiful thing, and getting more beautiful by the year.

Makey Makey on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360

The video above is a glimpse of some of the research and development game accessibility work I'm doing at the moment for SpecialEffect.

When I first got my hands on the build your own controller Makey Makey kit, I was disappointed to find that it wouldn't connect to an Xbox 360 or PS3 via any adapters I had to hand. With the brilliant Cronus Device and a PC, it will. This enables custom very light pressure controls to be used in a wide variety of ways.

Quick D.I.Y. Help: 1. Link your PS3 and PC using the Cronus Device and supplied Cronus cable. 2. Start the Bullseye software. 3. Download, import then start this "Test: MM Pinball" profile. 4. Connect one control to the SPACE BAR or LEFT-CLICK for flippers etc. and the other control if needed to "W" for nudging.

Tattoo foot switches for Computer Use

The Tattoolan YouTube clip above shows how to make a Do It Yourself (DIY) Tattoo foot pedal. Interesting to see that on eBay there are hundreds of these from China starting from £1.89 delivered.

These will work great as accessibility switches with modern switch accessible toys, gadgets and computers, so long as you use an adapter (search for "6.35 socket to 3.5mm plug mono adapter") or you cut the plug off and fit your own 3.5mm plug. You could also just cut the ends off and screw the exposed wire into a MakeyMakey or the likes of an Ultimarc i-Pac or A-Pac (A-Pac for the easiest and greatest power using JoyToKey where you can latch controls, switch profiles and more). Use a Cronus Device and use these on a PS3 or Xbox 360. More to follow on this.

R2D2 - Switch Accessible

This inflatable R2D2 is another switch accessible toy added to the OneSwitch shop. You can use one-switch to spin, making a great cause and effect device. Add another to go forward up to total of four switches for maximum control...

This R2 unit is a bit spin-happy, whereby if you press spin, he won't stop the instant you release the button/switch. This makes controlling him quite fun if a little unpredictable, which I think was probably deliberate as it gives him a bit of R2 personality (i.e. a mind of its own).

DIY Game Accessibility

The Controller Project from Caleb Kraft of Hack-a-day is an excellent new addition to the gamut of people sharing and promoting game accessibility solutions.

I've long been an advocate of people finding their own solutions, but for some people the range of possibilities and barriers they face are utterly daunting. For that, thank goodness for the likes of the charity SpecialEffect (at least in the UK) and their loan-library, games-room, OTs and home visits. Anyway, here's some more D.I.Y. resources for accessible gaming tinkerers:

Acid-Mods: A forum full of ideas for hacks and solutions. It's dried up a bit recently but still worth trawling through.

Hack Ability Blog: A more "life-in-general" hacking blog with top ideas.

Dual-Ring: A brilliant game accessibility site, that shares some very affordable/free hacks/get-arounds for improving access such from Auto Hot Key scripts to adapting Ikea furniture. A must see.

Makey-Makey Hackcess: The brilliant and very easy D.I.Y. controller that works on PCs out of the box, and using the Cronus Device and Bullseye software, can be used on Xbox 360 and PS3. Huge possibilities, especially if you link it other controls with JoyToKey. More on that soon.

One Switch D.I.Y. pages: also try searching this blog on "hacked", "adapted" or "enabled". Loads more links here to easy to complex adaptations from me, and the likes of Gavin Philips and Ben Heck.

Sugru: Wonderful blu-tack feeling material that sets hard for easy physical adaptations. More to follow on that soon.


And there's tons more besides this. If you have any that I've not mentioned though, do feel free to get in touch to share them. Happy hacking.

iOS7 - Switches > Switch Source > Head Movement

Apple are really starting to get their act together as regards switch access so it seems looking at previews of the iOS7 accessibility options.

The "Activate a switch on your input device now, or enable a built-in switch" looks like a way to make all the disparate methods of interfacing work (I hope). Love the addition of the head-switch using the built in camera. I assume accuracy would improve with the iPhone, iPad, iPod being mounted, rather than wobbling around in the hands of the user.

More info at 9To5 Mac, with thanks to Will Wade for the tip.

My Ex-Boyfriend The Space Tyrant (PC/Mac/Linux)

So pleased to see the point-and-click adventure My Ex-Boyfriend The Space Tyrant! using the Game Accessibility Information symbol exactly as specified. The game has some excellent accessibility features, which author Luke Miller details well. It has an unconventional gay space theme adding further diversity to an often pretty sterile gaming world. Certainly the world's a much more interesting place for having different colours and ideas in it, especially when it's accessible. Many thanks to Ian Hamilton of Game Accessibility Guidelines for the tip-off.

iOS 7: Better Switch Access On the Way

I've made no secret that I think current Apple iOS switch access is a confusing mess and extremely limited. With news of the pending iOS7 operating system update (see the video above (update: the clip was swiftly removed after publication - have a test card instead)), it looks like things could be improving soon. I'm second guessing, but I think there will still be some way to go before the following ever becomes a reality...

For Apple to set up a versatile Alternative User Interface Device protocol. Something that takes into account switch, joypad and mouse/head-tracker/eye-gaze access.

That (ideally) the wide range of existing switch interfaces remain compatible with the new interfacing protocol.

That a keyboard can be used to simulate a switch interface, and ideally a mouse can be used to simulate a future head-tracker or eye-tracker interface to keep costs down for developers. This would also open up a path for a wide range of controllers being developed for alternative access and some exciting D.I.Y. hacks.

That switches can be set-up to trigger held presses, taps, emulated gestures/taps, and work on old Apps and games (even if only to a limited extent).

Multiple-controller profiles being possible to easily set-up, save and load. How brilliant this would be for massively improving physical access to iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Moon Waltz

Fun, but potentially ultra-violent, Major Beuno's Moon Waltz, gives you the power to reveal a full moon using the SPACE BAR. This will affect the state of a young man walking to the end of his town to buy some cigarettes, who happens to be a Werewolf.

You can choose to wreak absolute pandemonium upon the town, or try to be a more upstanding citizen. Hugely accessible, with a variety of different endings. My only wish is that you didn't need an additional switch to start and restart (key "R"), as this would make a brilliant pure one-switch game

Polybius (1981) - Urban Myth

"According to legend, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981, something of a rarity at the time. The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and lines formed around the machines, often resulting in fighting over who played next.

This was followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide in some versions of the legend."

That game's name was said to be Polybius. Looks like a one-switch game too, if the Simpsons' take is to be believed.

Via Wikipedia and WikiSimpsons.

Cursor Click

Cursor Click from Don Calaca replicates one of the earliest ever one-button games, played before most people had home computers. It took one or more pocket calculators that had a "constant calculations" mode, started by tapping in 1,+,+. You would then be able to hammer the equals button as fast as you could to constantly count upwards. With two players and two calculators you could both race to a set-number, e.g. first to 100 wins. The 1970s equivalent of Track and Field or Sonic and Mario at the Olympics.

10 Years of OneSwitch.org.uk

Today (10.06.2013) is the 10th anniversary of OneSwitch.org.uk being launched as an official business. Before then I was toying with it being a charity or something in between. It was started to share ideas and to try and make a small difference in the world.

It's nice to look back, and I'm so pleased to have started this journey for the many wonderful and supportive people I've come into contact with. It's good to look forward too. The book I planned to have ready today, OneSwitch 100, is still being written, but I'm determined to finish it. Coming soon too will be a solderless D.I.Y. switch interface and D.I.Y. analogue controls. Far off in the future another two books are planned. So many ideas, and so little time...

Hug Punx vs. Punks Not Dead

HugPunx and PunksNotDead are two games sharing simple controls but opposing Utopian/Dystopian scenarios when the world turned Day-glo.

Both require excellent tracking skills, as it's easy to lose track of your character when things get busy. HugPunx is incredibly easy to complete. PunksNotDead is nightmarishly hard (even with the extra ability to jump bullets). Great music in both and striking pink on black graphics. HugPunx can be made one-switch accessible using William Pilgrim's brilliant 4Noah 2010 Beta utility. A one-switch hugging simulator. Hmm... Recon it wouldn't be too tough to adapt a hugging machine for real (see below).

Being Human

Switch Accessible Drinks Dispenser

Simple drink dispenser imported from Japan, inspired by "moroQ" and switch adapted. Likely a complete one-off as so hard to find, so if you want it, now's your chance. 30 quid plus postage from the OneSwitch shop brand new old-stock and has never had liquid through it.