Giving everyone high-tech fun with custom gaming rigs
Everyone these days is a gamer. Except, of course, there’s a huge demographic that the market doesn’t cater for — those living with disabilities.
Those living with physical disabilities often can’t take part in the hype around the latest Call of Duty release — it’s rare for developers to even bother taking colour blindness into consideration when designing what a game looks like, and that can affect between five to 10 per cent of people.
Enter SpecialEffect, a charity that helps people with physical disabilities play video games using customised gaming hardware setups.
“Up to the age of 17 I used to play a lot of console games, but the movement in my hands got worse and I wasn’t able to hold the control pad or press the buttons,” says Ajay, a 35-year-old IT support analyst from London with spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that reduces muscle strength, including in his hands. “I gave up on the idea of being able to play.”
Now, he can play games using his chin. “SpecialEffect helped me find a joystick that I can use with my chin, and added voice activated games controls alongside a switch that I can use with the side of my hand. Initially I wanted to play every game because I was so excited. SpecialEffect have given me back something that I lost many years ago.”
The charity was founded in 2007 by assistive technology specialist Dr Mick Donegan, and since then it has helped thousands of people of all ages and conditions, including accident victims, service personnel with combat injuries, people with congenital and progressive conditions and stroke patients.
It can even mean using facial-recognition software, which has been used to let players enjoy Minecraft and other mainstream games
Each person requires their own highly customised gaming setup, matched to their needs. SpecialEffect’s team of occupational therapists spend hours modifying and adjusting equipment so that, if needed, the subtlest of movements can translate into joypad inputs. It can even mean using facial-recognition software, which has been used to let players enjoy Minecraft and other mainstream games.
The key to SpecialEffect’s work is that they understand that it’s not just about getting the chance to play games, but about people being given the chance to be better than their friends — from the dad who can finally play against (and be beaten by) his son with cerebral palsy at a game of football, to the siblings who can fairly race each other again and again and again on Mario Kart.
To raise funds, the charity also runs a bunch of gaming events, including Gameblast — a weekend marathon where gamers are encouraged to get involved with friends, family or colleagues and get sponsored to play as many games as possible within the time limit. The most recent edition, on 20 February, raised more than £120,000.
Levelling the gaming playing field has earned SpecialEffect recognition, the charity was included in the 2014 Nominet Trust 100 (NT100) — a global list of 100 inspiring ventures from around the world.
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