In the world of video games, inclusion is redefining the very concept of entertainment. We’re not just talking about epic battles or daredevil races, but experiences that break down digital barriers, making gaming accessible even to those living with disabilities. Handimatica, an event organized by the Asphi Foundation, is the ideal stage to discover the technological innovations that transform video games into tools for participation, learning and autonomy.
Thanks to adaptive devices and advanced technologies, people with motor, sensory or cognitive impairments can finally participate, play and interact. But this revolution does not stop at fun: it is a step toward a more equitable society, where digital accessibility becomes synonymous with social inclusion.
TAKEAWAYS
The technologies that make video games accessible to people with disabilities are not just for entertainment: they are a doorway to new possibilities, on and off the screen.
The challenge is not just to play better, but to rethink the role of gaming as a tool for growth, inclusion and innovation for all.
The technologies that make video games accessible
My “pixie” guide Alessandro Norfo, a trainer and software developer at Asphi Foundation, quickly proves instrumental in explaining to me the usefulness of the devices I see scattered around a screen where a poorly dressed bodybuilder scrambles to fight a monster. There are two large “smarties,” one green and one yellow, a blue rotatable sphere, and a small gray box. The latter, the most anonymous and seemingly insignificant, is the key piece of a customizable and adaptable sensor puzzle over time that makes it possible for people with certain types of disabilities to play “video games for all.” It is commercial hardware (it is the Xbox adaptive controller), so it has an affordable cost, and is a kind of control unit to which all the sensors needed by those cannot use the joystick as commonly sold can be connected.
The two “smarties” are convenient buttons to mash, the ball is large and easy to rotate, there are then ultrasensitive black surfaces to touch, and even the joystick itself on the market can join this “inclusive sensor community.”
“The breadth of possible connections and combinations translates into the possibility of easily and at limited cost creating a totally customized gaming station for each individual player,” Norfo explains, “selecting only useful and stimulating sensors and controls, even integrating the possible presence of a co-pilot. And over time everything can be changed, if capabilities vary, or adapted to the needs of even a particular video game that requires different skills.”
In my multi-sensor station, I feel strange and totally uncoordinated. Used to having all the controls in my hands, compact and small, everything under control through my more developed senses, I am incredibly bewildered. My avatar is not advancing fluidly, I feel incapable, and the many connected sensors are showing me how disconnected I am, inside. And how much I always use the same “connections” inside, never stimulating my body to make more.
From tremendous discovery, this feeling turns into amusement, abetted by a photographer friend who laughs at me and makes me laugh at myself. And here begins my real game, the one I came to Handimatica for. The next level involves the use of another device, harder and for me improbable to “master”: a nozzle to put in the mouth, to command the game with one’s breath. I, who notoriously, despite years of yoga, often do not breathe, am destined to be left in the lurch. Or to educate myself, as anyone who has a difficulty and cares to overcome it in order to decide their position in the world and gain possible freedoms
My total inability to move a hypothetical mouse by breathing into a nozzle takes my breath away, Alessandro (I call him by his first name, because of the confidence created by deconstructing my certainties) cheers me up by showing me colorful pads of conductive fabric. They are soft, I can caress them even with my face. They are very sensitive; just touch them and you can throw commands gently and effectively. I fall back into a zone of discreet comfort, I stay there even when he proposes to continue the on-screen adventure with a piece of Didò. It is the same one I have always played with; a child next to me holds a ball of it between his fingers, thoughtful.
“It is connected to Click4all with jumper cables, so commands converge with those received from other sensors and an even more personalized space can be composed for each player,” Alessandro explains to me.
[Click4all is a kit designed for people who have a complex motor or cognitive disability and are unable to use standard interfaces such as a mouse, keyboard or touch screen. With Click4all, it is possible to use different computing devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, etc., creating customizable keyboards and mice that can be adapted to the person’s abilities-ed].
Alessandro is keen to point out that Click4all was developed by the Asphi Foundation itself, is affordable and very suitable especially for education, thanks to the wide possibility of adding sensors that are also very “child-friendly.”
I nod, but I never stopped enjoying the Didó – it gave me a much – needed moment of relaxation to dive back into other out-of-comfort areas to discover the software part of the experience. Here I find myself having to drive a car at high speed using my nose. A tool tracks the coordinates of my face, focusing on the very position of my nose and using it to figure out which direction I want to go. Needless to explain, I have no awareness of the movements of my nose and very little sensitivity and delicacy in guiding it where I want to go. But this technology allows people who only move their faces to play, to participate, to have fun but also to interact with the screen for any other kind of activity and interest.
“It’s different from eye tracking, which is better known, very accurate, more technologically advanced but not always necessary,” Alessandro explains to me, “this one is not particularly complex to develop, you plug in an open source library for face tracking and one for gamepad emulation, with a python script, and you’re done!”
Audiogame, listen to each other listen
Easier to make than to use, almost, for someone like me who, increasingly aware of her own internal disconnect, faces the grand finale. Audiogames. I close my eyes and let myself be immersed in the sounds emitted in my seat neighbor’s game. I do not know who he is, but he knows what he is doing: he hears noises that are all the same to me and plays accordingly. I feel him giving confident commands, reacting, participating. He is hard at work, and he is also winning. I know because he comments contentedly with a friend.
“To play fluently, on average you need to create a mind map of at least 80-90 sounds. For a fighting video game that may be enough, more complex are those with a mission, a challenge,” says Francesco Aleotti, a computer trainer and accessibility expert. Intuiting my surprise, I explain that it seems very challenging for anyone to reach these levels. “It’s not trivial, but it’s not as difficult as it seems, especially for those who have a visual disability. The really important achievement is that today for almost all video games on the market there is the possibility to be used as audiogames because the audio part is usually properly developed. Before, we had to use ‘ours,’ the ones made especially for the visually impaired, definitely ghettoizing“.
Accessible video games, not just for playing
Those who have come this far deserve a clear, concise and precise explanation of the usefulness of what I have experienced at Handimatica (and all that is still being realized, coming soon).
Developing technologies that enable those with disabilities to transmit input and interact with a computer means:
- Enabling people to play but also work, operate home automation devices to inhabit their environment as independently as possible, take advantage of digitized public services, move around in a modern transportation network;
- Make people feel that they are part of the game, with others, like others, in the same game. In both a metaphorical and real sense, with obvious impacts on the moral and social aspect;
- Discover and/or develop new abilities of the individual person that had not emerged because they had not been stimulated (a child seems not to recognize left and right, does not respond if asked, but “magically” in a car game, drives confidently around every curve…);
- Making technologies more appropriate, for everyone indiscriminately.
Artificial intelligence promises exciting new breakthroughs for those working on a future of barrier-free technologies. Alexander is reluctant to talk about it, but you can see that he believes in it and looks forward to the next steps forward in development and testing. There could be a personalized AI-based co-pilot, adaptable to the evolving potential of the individual person and figuring out for itself what it can’t do and what it can do. And speech recognition software could become increasingly adept at “recognizing” what anyone says, regardless of pronunciation or speech defects making them completely irrelevant. In short, software capable of really listening, without bias, better than we human beings.
