IN 2009 AbleGamers, an American charity hoping to improve the lot of disabled video-game players, sent some representatives to a game-development conference in San Francisco. They asked the assembled producers if they had ever thought about making their products disability-friendly. Most said no. A few said yes. One person walked away laughing.
That was a mistake. In America alone, some 33m players of video games are reckoned (on a broad definition) to have one sort of disability or another. However many there are, making it hard for them to play a game means leaving money on the table. Eight years on, such dismissive attitudes are much less common. Some developers go out of their way to take disabled people’s interests into account.
One such is Geoffrey Harbach, the boss of Long Eaton Powered Mobility Integration Service, a British firm that makes hardware for disabled gamers. The group’s kit ranges from one-handed controllers designed for amputees, to “access pods”,...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/2xIJ0GO
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