“It’s everything that I want to do, but can’t in real life”
Wednesday, May 15th, 2024
A low-level link in Joe’s gaming setup has helped to unlock access to some of his favourite games.
Joe’s ataxia-telangiectasia limits his movements, and in recent months, tremors and a loss of strength in his left arm have made it increasingly difficult for him to play the games he loves.
Frankie, one of our specialist assessment team, visited him to see if we could help, and after working together to consider a number of potential solutions they found that a large low-mounted joystick, in combination with carefully placed switches, provided the best practical solution for minimising Joe’s tremors and unlocking the best of his gaming abilities.
Our specialist teams face different challenges almost every day creating bespoke adapted controller setups to match the specific abilities of individual disabled gamers. As a result every assessment represents a learning process, and it’s a privilege to be able to distil this accumulated experience and knowledge for sharing globally through our free accessibility resources like EyeMine, gameaccess.info and Eye Gaze Games. It’s also a privilege to be able to share our accessibility experience with developers through resources like our DevKit to help make their games more accessible worldwide.
But most of all it’s just a joy to see first-hand what a stunning impact this has for people like Joe across the world. So many more people now have the opportunity to participate as equals in astonishingly rich competitive gaming environments and social communities, resulting in greater independence, self-esteem, confidence, achievement, and an opportunity to bring out the very best in themselves.
We simply wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the support of our amazing friends in the global games industry and of course the many gamers, communities and individual donors who help fund our work and keep all of our services and resources free-of-charge. Thank you – you’re truly making a life-changing difference!