Interlude

I'm presently beavering away with some stuff in the background, so please enjoy a 1970's Sesame Street classic and some Slovakian old-band music in the meanwhile.

Attractor

Attractors, is a simple puzzle game developed by The Game Kitchen with AccessAble Games as accessibility advisor. The game has special accessibility options that include: no time limit, invincibility, quick restart, game speed controls, one switch mode, microphone control mode, high contrast and no-click mode. 

You can play it for free at: www.thegamekitchen.com/attractor and read a review at the Accessible GameBase.

You can also download it and place on our own web site. Take it from here: www.thegamekitchen.com/attractor/attractor-redis01.zip

While playing, press ESC to return to main menu; you will return to the level that you have left when you click play again on main menu. Main menu and between levels menu are also accessible for one switch and no-click mode.
 

Info taken from Javier Mairena's post on the IGDA GASIG Blog

BrainDriver - a mind controlled car

Brain controlled driving of real cars: what fun! Autonomos Labs in Germany have used an Emotiv headset and developed a way to drive using thoughts to decide LEFT or RIGHT. What amazing freedom this could bring many people currently unable to drive. And how long before we see mind control car races in the real world I wonder?

Link via: Hackaday

BlindComputerGames.com

"blindcomputergames.com is an information resource that includes:

A set of guidelines for developers who want to improve blind accessibility in their games.

An article for gamers who are blind to help them show developers how to make their games accessible to them.

Articles that give developers technical information, including code samples, to help them make their games accessible.

For gamers, it gives the technical words they need to communicate with developers at companies, big and small. It explains who to talk to, what information the developer will need, and when in the development cycle to communicate with a developer and to have the best chance of obtaining the changes that will increase accessibility.

For developers, it explains screen readers and self-voicing, and includes a blind accessibility checklist, some good example games, technical “how to's”, and a short guide to blind etiquette.

It's totally free and requires no registration.

The project took three months and was done at the request of and with the help of Dark, the administrator for audiogames.net and the leading advocate for blind gamers.

He is frequently asked by developers, "What would it take?" Now he has a place to send them, and a place to send his readers who have a game or other software program that they can “almost use”.

Although it is focused on games, much of the information is applicable to any software, not just games.

Any feedback would be helpful."

Via: Eleanor Robinson - 7-128 Software on the IGDA GASIG mailing list.

Air Chair

Reproduced from the MERU Friends Update newsletter:

"How can a family go on holiday if one of the children is disabled and needs special seating to travel by plane?

This is a conundrum MERU designed a solution to over 10 years ago when we developed the MERU Air Chair. 30 of these chairs have been made under license over the past 10 years enabling children with postural support needs to travel with their families all over the world.

MERU has one Air Chair in our workshops in Epsom which we have been lending to children like Evie.

However, there is always room for improvement, so after 10 years MERU is working with an organisation called Devices 4 Dignity to design the Air Chair MkII, and MERU would like to hear from anyone who has experience of travelling as a disabled passenger to help us with our new design."

Fantastic "Mr Blue Sky" image via Francis O'Brien.

Update: MERU have a dedicated page for their brilliant AirChair page now up on-line.

Why This? Why Us? Why?!

I've mentioned Badlands before, Konami's 1984 (mainly) one-switch laser-disk arcade game, but this time there's a video to share. It looks like a lot of fun, especially with the super hammy acting!

Game Accessibility Campaigner: Gareth Garratt

Gareth Garratt has achieved something fantastic. He's one of a growing number of disabled gamers who have petitioned for greater access in a game, and then been promised it by the developer.

Facing the familiar problem of being unable to reconfigure the game controls on his latest purchase, EA's Dead Space 2, he posted his frustrations on the  OverClockers Forums.

This in turn led to people spreading his message further, a huge boost to Chuck Bittner's Custom Remapping Petition, and eventually straight to the developers of Dead Space 2 themselves. They ended up posting the following:

"Hi Gareth, I'm a developer from Visceral Games Australia, the studio responsible for the PC port of Dead Space 2. Sorry to hear about your issue - I've spoken with a few key people here and we'll do our best to include a fix for it in the next patch. In the mean time, please PM me. Cheers! Michael."

Then, in a message to Joystiq, Dead Space 2 executive producer Steve Papoutsis went one further.

"The Dead Space 2 team is aware of the issue that disabled players are having with Dead Space 2 PC. In fact a number of folks on our team are so passionate about getting this fix done that they are currently working hard to allow players to re-map key bindings to the mouse which should help disabled players enjoy the game.

"I'd like to say I'm very proud of the people on the Dead Space 2 team for coming in today and jumping on the fix first thing. Working with such a talented and compassionate group of people is incredible and makes me proud to be a part of the Dead Space 2 team, Visceral Games, and Electronic Arts.

"In addition to the key binding fix the patch will include other fixes for PC players. Thank you for taking up the cause for our disabled players and letting us know about this problem. Once the patch is fully tested we will announce a release date."

Let's hope EA will be encouraging all their teams to add reconfigurable control options in the future.

Links to: PC Gamer, EuroGamer and others - via Gavin Philips, Mick Donegan and Lynsey Graeme on the IGDA GASIG mailing list.