Was such a pleasure to meet Ellie and her family at the superb Little Havens Children's Hospice, early this year, even though Ellie consistently thrashed me at Mario Kart. Stupid game.
The Wii remote needed to be lightened, which was achieved in the main by removing the batteries and placing them in a separate box. A very simple hack, but worked out to be really effective.
I'm wondering if Ellie will be able to use her controller on Just Dance 4 coming out soon for the Wii-U. Hope so.
SpecialEffect had their third outing at the UK's EuroGamer Expo 2012. This time taking a prime spot between the likes of FarCry 3, SimCity, and Assassins Creed 3: Liberation.
Three set-ups were available, being: Portal 3 with highly customised set-up of a chin-mounted joypad and a variety of switches. In the middle was a video show-casing a little of what SpecialEffect is about. On the right was Dirt 3 set-up with eye-gaze control and fastest time competition.
Isaac Harvey won the Dirt 3 competition (pictured playing Halo with his feet below). So good to know a diverse range of people got to understand about game accessibility in this way.
Away from SpecialEffect were a number of games with some good access features. Very much looking forward to pending accessibility boosts to indie-instant-classics DRM and Proteus.
"This 1979 poster pays tribute to the extremely popular Space Invaders video arcade game and encourages passengers to read their newspapers without invading the space of other passengers."
I overlooked Micro Sprint the first time I saw it, but that was a mistake. This is superb. It's a pure one-switch racing game for one to eight players (or up to two players with the free demo). It's not far away from Atari's Championship Sprint but far more accessible.
The entire menu system is one-switch accessible, activated by setting the "GUI AUTO CYCLE" to your preferred speed (find it in the preferences area). Even when you have this system on, you can still very comfortably use the mouse if needed for setting a game up, as it deactivates auto-scanning for a few seconds when you move it. Very nice.
The game has reconfigurable controls, various difficulty levels, practice areas and an excellent speed assist mode which I've not seen before. When switched on, you get a little green or red indicator that follows your car around. If it's red it means you need to slow down or you'll bash into the side of the track. A nice alternative to "auto-braking" which would take all the fun out of a Scalextric game otherwise. I also really like the way it indicates where your car is at the start of a race when you press your switch impatiently.
You will need good visual tracking skills to play this well on the harder levels as the cars are tiny. This is a great game, and well worth the current $2.49 asking price.
AccessAble Games have made fun use of the Makey Makey DIY controller kit. Playing Dirt 3 with spoons. Gives an idea for how light-pressure control can be in this way. Would love to see this made compatible with modern games consoles.
This post is aimed at the game industry in general: I remember back in 2006 Kotaku publishing a really offensive article linked to game accessibility. It was an example of one or two ignorant men in positions of power, not really getting it.
What was far more frustrating to come up against at the time was the amount of ignorance in general around what things in gaming design were commonly disabling people; What it was that stopped people from being able to enjoy playing a game. It wasn't that people in gaming didn't care about their fellow humans. It was frequently that they simply just didn't know anyone was finding it a struggle.
Roll on six years, and I can sense a sea-change in understanding, willing and empathy. It makes me really proud and happy to have been a small part of the game accessibility movement that is bringing this about.
Below are some key 21st century efforts to get good useful information across to game developers...
You can find much more at the moth-balled Game-Accessibility.com resource section. To be honest, you can't go too far wrong with most of the above. Dive in!
This isn't everything developers need, and the sheer quantity of information can seem daunting (try addressing one point of a Top 5 or Top 10 for a gentler route in). There's still a long way to go before there's a truly one-stop resource for all you need. Perhaps there never will be. Don't let that stop you trying to boost accessibility. And never forget that even if you add just one accessibility feature, it can make a massive difference.
This all very much ties up with the UN's Convention of the Right of the Child, Article 31:
"1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity."
