Learning about Accessible Video Games

{sidebar id=1}This past fall, I went to Accessibility Camp DC at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington, DC. An accessibility camp is a “un-conference,” a type of meeting where the people who attend decide the topics, which explains new technology that can help people who are disabled, blind, and/or deaf. The purpose of the camp was to show off some of the new things in accessibility and to explain how people can make things like applications, websites, and documents accessible.

I started off at the Accessibility Camp by testing and setting up the three games (In the Pit, Forza Motorsport, and My Golf Game) that Mark Barlet of AbleGamers was using to demonstrate alternative ways to play.

[blockquote]Editor's Note: Jesse Freeman (@critterguy) is an 8^th grader in Lynn, Mass. He’s been playing video games for 8 years and Xbox for 3 years. He especially likes to play first-person shooter, strategy, and action-adventure games. He attended his first Accessibility Camp in March 2010, when he went to the Boston Accessibility Unconference in Waltham, Mass with his mom, Char James-Tanny (@charjtf). Jesse’s Xbox Live gamertag is “A Hiding Panda”.[/blockquote]

In the Pit was created for the blind. You play as a monster in a pitch-black pit, eating who ever falls into the pit. The levels get harder as you go. The screen was completely blank for the entire game and you must rely completely on your sense of hearing to play. We used surround Turtle Beach X11 headsets, the kind of headsets built for pro gamers who need to hear voices and gameplay at a high level.

When I first tried to play it, I thought it was broken because all I saw was a blank screen. Eventually Mark told me that it was supposed to be like that and it started to make sense. I had many blind people try out In the Pit and most of them were better than I was. The top level that was achieved that day was by one of the many blind people who were there; they reached level 9.

When I got home, I bought In the Pit off of Xbox Live.

Forza Motorsport is an “off-the-shelf” racing game that AbleGamers setup so that you could control the car with a breather (sip and puff) and a chin controller. A breather (know as a sip and puff) is a tube that was plugged into a controller to control how fast the car will go. These controllers with the breathers were for people who couldn’t use their hands.  This game was sort of difficult to explain to people because they would want use their hands for when they were controlling the car. Mark connected hand-operated controllers to control the speed of the car because he didn’t have enough breathers for everyone to use.

The last game was VTree’s My Golf Game for people who have a learning disability like autism or a severe physical disability. It was a brand new game that was designed to be accessible from the beginning and even recruited AbleGamers to consult on some parts of the game. PGA Pro Golfer Ernie Els, who has an autistic son, is the main sponsor.

You only need one click of the mouse to move the angle of your shot left and right and high, and then you would click one of the buttons on the mouse and that would hit the ball. Then it would do a clip showing you were the ball landed and you repeat until you get it in. I played this most of the time because it was really easy to learn and play and really fun at the same time. The game can also be played with the touchpad, Xbox controller, or voice recognition software.

Other people who were at the Accessibility Camp would come in and ask questions on how these games were accessible and how they worked. They would try them out but it was difficult to explain In the Pit to people who weren’t blind because they thought the game was messed up when the screen didn’t show any graphics.

Mark also brought special controllers for the Xbox 360 that were made for people with certain disabilities. The controllers had the buttons switched around. The controllers were specifically “modded” with the buttons changed by Evil Controllers.

Evil Controllers is a modding company that turns your normal controller for Xbox 360 or Play Station 3 into one that can rapidly fire single shot guns in first, second, and third person shooters. They can specially design a controller for people who have a disability with their hands. If you send them an email asking if they can move the buttons around, they will most likely say yes, but it might cost a little extra. I thought it was really cool that the blind people could play these games and find it really fun.

Mark also brought along several other devices, including:

-          A handheld mouse for people with arthritis that is easier to hold onto

-          A controller glove, with pads in the fingertips and on the palm that could be used like controller buttons

-          An arm cuff that could be used to hold a Wii controller

-          Buttons for people who have trouble lifting their arms

Overall, my time at the camp taught me that making accessible video games was possible, and that games can be accessible with the right controllers. I also learned lot about other things like software, but that’s for another time. Have fun playing accessible games!