15 ms·

A new Xbox controller to make gaming accessible to more people with disabilities

294 points by lamchob 8y ago

zaarn 8y ago
It's good to see people working on stuff, this type of inclusive development really makes me excited!
staticelf 8y ago
Really great move by Microsoft. People often worry for things like IE support but people with disabilities often falls between the chairs.
sgtmas2006 8y ago
This controller is going to be wonderful for far more than just disabled people, I can't wait to use it for more interactive possibilities.
- Marazan 8y ago
  Having all the button connections over 3.5mm jacks is a super cool idea.
- fredley 8y ago
  Good products "for people with disabilities" are often just good products full stop. Take for example Good Grips[1], a brand of cookware and kitchen tools. Initially designed as specifically for the elderly and people who otherwise have trouble gripping conventional kitchen utensils, it's become a bestselling brand in its own right (I own several things) because the products are just that much more ergonomic and sturdy than anything else. [1]: https://www.oxouk.com/ https://www.oxouk.com/
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Some other recent HN article did an interesting presentation on the reason so many Infomercials for products seem so weird is that the only way to sell some of these products designed specifically to help the differently enabled have to be sold as if they were for particularly lazy fully capable humans. In order to try to get the product to market at all, they have to market to the weird/lazy/strange mainstream target market you see in Infomercial pitches, and often you miss that little bit of "originally built to help my elderly friends or invented to help someone after a stroke".
iicc 8y ago
>$99.99 That's incredible :) It's USB, so this is going to end up being used for far more than gaming.
- radiorental 8y ago
  Here, let me save you $50. It's the same principle, just a USB breakout box. But one better - capacitive input instead of just switches (of course, switches work too) https://makeymakey.com/ https://makeymakey.com/
  - iicc 8y ago
    You're right. I wrongly assumed this had 2 capacitive controllers (like a steam controller) on the top not just 2 massive buttons.
  - wolrah 8y ago
    Except that doesn't work with an Xbox. There are definitely dozens of existing solutions for PC use, but the console world has long been protective of their gamepads and generally don't allow arbitrary custom devices to be connected unless they're built by hacking up a "certified" device. This is, to my knowledge, the first time any major console has officially supported custom input devices. It's annoying that it requires a proprietary bridge device rather than just getting rid of their artificial limits on HID input devices that work fine on Windows 10 on their Windows 10 powered appliance, but I guess it is still progress.
    - opencl 8y ago
      The PS3 worked with standard USB HID gamepads out of the box. Too bad Sony dropped this support in the PS4. Oddly though Sony has allowed developers to ship their own custom USB HID drivers in PS4 games, which some fighting games have done to allow people to use their old PS3 fight sticks.
  - OskarS 8y ago
    It's not just a USB breakout box. On the back of it, is has standard inputs for assistive devices that map directly to Xbox controller buttons, as well as settings for different input profiles. $100 is a totally reasonable prize, especially in this market.
thomasfedb 8y ago
Can we swap "disabled people" for "people with disabilities" please?
- sterlind 8y ago
  I'm okay calling myself a disabled person, personally. I have some pretty severe disabilities, in spite of which I stay employed and productive. I find identifying as disabled empowering, since it acknowledges the constant effort I put into my health and mobility. I respect that others don't like the phrase "disabled people," since it's something they have rather than something they are. But there's not a consensus on what phrase to use.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    Ditto. "People with disabilities" feels, to me, very forced and as a result stands out, whereas "disabled people" feels like a natural way to phrase it.
  - thomasfedb 8y ago
    I think it's entirety valid to be happy with the label "disabled" and to embrace that. My background is as a carer for children with intellectual disabilities, and I'm always disappointed when the first thing somebody wants to know about a kid is their diagnosis. I'd much rather tell you that Terry likes Football than tell you he has Autism. People often get fixated on the disability however. Person-first language, in my experience, encourages people to see and think about the person before they see the disability. It encourages then to consider that perhaps John is stroppy because he's a moody teenager, rather than adding it's being he has Autism.
- therobotking 8y ago
  This is why Trump won!!!
- hungerstrike 8y ago
  The original title says “people with a broad range of disabilities” so I agree with you, but only for that reason. I can’t stand the way that HN changes titles. Otherwise, I’m not going to tiptoe around people and change my speech patterns because they might be offended by something that meant no offense to them.
namanyayg 8y ago
This is amazing. Microsoft frequently does things that offer amazing new ways of interfacing AND are hackable enough to have flexible applications. I have fond memories of owning and "hacking" the Kinect and connecting it to my PC, to develop custom code to control media playback and stuff. I never owned one, but the Surface also looked quite unique. However, I feel these products don't reach the level of "lovability" other such products enjoy. I wonder if this is an execution or PR problem? Either way, hope the Adaptive Controller enables a lot of people to enjoy video games and we see some interesting unconventional applications of it soon.
- balls187 8y ago
  Mostly because the majority of users aren't interested in hackability of devices. Kinect didn't have much in the way of software, and the OTS stuff was clunky. It also followed on after the Wii, which also featured clunky software, also had tremendous 1st party support to keep it viable.
scarface74 8y ago
I can only use one hand. I use to play video games all of the time but once game controllers started requiring two hands and shoulder buttons, I couldn't play most games. I could play some games with fighting controllers (https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Officially-Licensed-Microsoft/dp/B01MSEPQ55 https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Officially-Li...) I also tried one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Playstation-handed-Dragon-controller/dp/B005EQTSLC https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Playstation-handed-Dragon-cont... - but could never get the hang of it. I might try this. My son is very into video games and I would love to play with him again. The only games that I played with him when he was younger were fighting games like Tekken and Soul Calibur and a few simple beat em up games but the games he plays now are too complicated to play with one hand. EDIT: I'm still trying to figure out after watching the videos, how this works with one hand. They showed a guy who had cerebral palsy that affected his right side but they never went into details about how he adapts it. Maybe they were just expecting the target market to know about assistive technologies? I've never used any so I don't know anything about them.
- morsch 8y ago
  Consider PC gaming. Lots of games work perfectly well with just the mouse.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    And there are lots of options in mouse selection, MMO mice can have dozens of buttons, the Roccat Nyth even allows replacing of the side-buttons with custom molds.
    - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      Also MMO keyboards / controllers and one-handed keyboards (like the Maltron)
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I couldn't bring myself to pay $479 for a keyboard and then have to relearn how to type after spending close to forty years typing with one hand on a regular QWERTY keyboard. Last time I checked, I can type at about 50 wpm but since most of my typing is coding, as long as my typing speed can keep up with my thinking speed (with autocomplete), it's not the bottleneck. This is my favorite keyboard: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRC6U2C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRC6U2C/ref=oh_aui_sear... I can reach from the Q to the P with one hand and can touch type on it.
donatj 8y ago
This is a very heart warming development for me. My dad has one hand, and only one finger on the hand he does have. He LOVED playing Atari 2600 and NES when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of playing games with him. After the SNES though he completely stopped playing games out of frustration, angry about why they needed so many buttons. I don’t think he ever even attempted to play our N64, let alone later consoles. I really hope the price point is accessible, I’d love to play games with my dad again.
- watwut 8y ago
  Had you looked at http://www.ablegamers.org/ http://www.ablegamers.org/ ? They can help to select right assistive technology for your dad.
- arkh 8y ago
  You may want to let him try some "simple" games : things like super hexagon or one finger death punch require only 2 keys. And some reflexes.
- vingiesel 8y ago
  > I don’t think he ever even attempted to play our N64 Understandable, since the n64 controller was designed for people with 3 hands.
- kingbirdy 8y ago
  Outside of this controller, if you and your dad have any interest in fighting games, you could check out Dive Kick - it's a two button fighting game, and they sell (sold?) a special controller with only two buttons.
myth_drannon 8y ago
There is also a personal angle to Microsoft involvement with these type of initiatives. The CEO has two children with disabilities and it looks like he is pushing for an inclusive company more than any other CEO. There is also Gobabygo which is an open source organization that modifies toy cars for children with disabilities http://sites.udel.edu/gobabygo/ http://sites.udel.edu/gobabygo/
- melling 8y ago
  “Necessity is the mother of invention”
- kelukelugames 8y ago
  I work on accessibility. Apple has always been the recognized leader.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    I think we all know that, but that doesn't necessarily mean Satya isn't putting in the effort. Apple has kept accessibility in mind for a lot long than he has been CEO of Microsoft.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      Accessibility is a much harder problem for the Windows and Android platforms, because they're dealing with a bigger and more open ecosystem with a lot of legacy baggage. Apple's very tight APIs make it much easier for software to be accessible by default.
      - maccard 8y ago
        I know you're talking about windows, but remember this controller is targetted at xbox, which is even more locked down than any of Apple's platforms.
        WorldMaker 8y ago
discussedbefore 8y ago
I recently learned two XBox controllers can function as one, an ease of access feature called Copilot. https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/copilot https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/copilot
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  It's mentioned in this article, as well, because Copilot was partly built to enable someone with one of these Adaptive Controllers to keep using the Xbox controller inputs they are comfortable with and extend them with this controller for the more uncomfortable ones. Then the designers realized there are plenty of other reasons people might want to pair controllers and there was no reason not to release it as a general feature for everyone.
dalbasal 8y ago
Disabilities may be some sort of a starting point, but this sort of product/feature doesn't necessarily begin and end there. A controller is a UI paradigm, like the keyboard & mouse "desktop" paradigm. Serving a userbase that can't use a standard UI will lead to invention of new ones. This could easily lead to mass market products/features that people will want regardless of disabilities. Particularly interesting (to me) are paradigms being developed for the blind, because they can't rely on displays. This is the same sort of problem as amazon echo, driving mode phones UIs and other products that need paradigms. The key though, the key is that blind people are a "captive" market. They can't just use the display UI every time the voice UI sucks. This gives developer the opportunity to keep improving it until the number of use cases where voice UIs work better than display gets big enough.
- elefantastisch 8y ago
  > Everyone has abilities, and limits to those abilities. Designing for people with permanent disabilities actually results in designs that benefit people universally. Constraints are a beautiful thing. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive
  - scoggs 8y ago
    I was thinking how awesome it is when developers think of all sorts of players from the very start by ensuring that their entire game, game system, and controller systems are configured for full customization from the start. It's something that I think every dev, that is capable, should be striving to do in everything they can (even outside of gaming specifically) but as you indicated above it's really awesome for EVERY kind of person, even if I'm not differently abled at all and all I want to do is swap shoot and reload's buttons because of my own personal (even it it's stupid and/or annoying) preference.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      One of the things that Microsoft's Inclusive Design efforts have made really usefully clear is that everyone is "differently abled" circumstantially/over-the-course of a day. It's a silly example: but if I'm eating a sandwich one hand and trying to use a computer, in that moment I'm a one-handed computer user, and can benefit from many of the same one-handed benefits of someone using a computer one-handed for more permanent reasons. But as silly as that example is, there are so many tiny moments in your day like that that maybe you dismiss them or you don't appreciate how differently abled you are at different points in the day. It's a bit like thinking through the classic riddle of the sphinx ("what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two during the day, and three in the evening?"). Our "ableness" is never a static constant, and its so useful to think of all the more transient states we live in every day. The more we include everyone, sometimes the better we include ourselves, too.
eksemplar 8y ago
I find it amazing that Microsoft can be doing this sort of thing, mean while, at the windows team they decided to change that windows taskbar sound control tool so that you now need to do “start->control panel->soundoptions” to change your primary source, rather than just right clicking the damn icon. One in a long range of terrible designs for windows. How can a company simultaneously be so great and so terrible at usability?
- bfrydl 8y ago
  By being big.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    Apple is big, their usability hasn’t gone to shit.
- emptyfile 8y ago
  Not sure what you mean, but you can change your primary audio source by clicking the right corner arrow on the little window that pops out when you click the speaker icon. EDIT: PIC https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_57d5d5cf71711.png https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_57d... Also this literally doesn't have anything to do with the subject of this thread.
  - AndrewGaspar 8y ago
    Yep. They actually made it MUCH easier to change your default audio source in Windows 10 (not sure which particular release this change came in).
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    Hmm, well I guess my stuff is broken, because I only have the option to buy a headset when I do that - disabled btw. But then, my windows still keeps turning down the brightness automatically unless I reboot after logging on the first time, so maybe it’s just a little incompatibility with my old ass laptop.
tryonqc 8y ago
as someone with a visual impairment I am always amazed at how little we talk/learn about accessibility and its lack of inclusion in the tests of new products. I like this "inclusive desing" term better though. (even though its the method to achieve accessibility)
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  It's market optimization. 99% of any new product's potential initial userbase does not have accessibility issues. Especially startups need to focus on getting the highest return on investment initially, before proceeding to smaller groups of potential customers. This is also why most new products are launched in the US first - huge market, no borders - instead of Europe where people have to deal with a few dozen languages and local laws.
braderhart 8y ago
You know what else would help make Windows more accessible for disabled people? Open source.
vanderZwan 8y ago
All of the four controllers shown seem to be great, but it's funny that the joystick is basically just the Wii nunchuck. That's not a dig against Microsoft, I suspect Nintendo just really hit it out of the park with their Wii-mote design and that there isn't much else to improve. I'm left-handed, and I remember realising that without thinking, I had switched to using my right hand for the analog joystick instead of the left one. This was months after I got a Wii - it was so natural that I hadn't even noticed. I don't recall anyone ever giving Nintendo credit for this, but their nunchuck-controller was pretty much the first mainstream controller for a console that was fully ambidextrous.
- wang_li 8y ago
  >the first mainstream controller for a console that was fully ambidextrous. While it's not a console as such, the Atari Lynx in the 1990s could be flipped over so that the joypad was on the other side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx
dragontamer 8y ago
Storytime. I had an online acquaintance who I practiced with in a fighting game called Blazblue. Said friend was also a martial-artist who also did live-steel fights. Dangerous, yes, but apparently there were rules about what weapons you could bring in, "first blood" and other such rules to try and keep things non-deadly. Anyway, one of his opponents used poison as his weapon, and now his hands were permanently F'd up due to that one poison fight. Long story short: I didn't see him online much after that. Its difficult for disabled people to get controllers that work well for them. And its not just arbitrary fights where people can lose the fine motor control of their hands. I know people who lost fine control after a bad car accident. (Fortunately, this one was temporary and after about a year, she got most of her motor control back into her hands). So any research into allowing injured people to better play video games (a hobby I'm very much like), is a win in my eyes. I've got at least two people who've I've personally met who would benefit. Even with today's advanced medicine, its not guaranteed that motor control will return back to your hands if you are injured. And injuries can really happen to anybody.
- InitialLastName 8y ago
  It doesn't even have to be injories; a stroke can easily cause pretty much unpredictable amounts of fine motor control loss in one hand or the other, and that can happen to anyone at any time.
phaedrus 8y ago
When I was in junior high or highschool I made an SNES controller for my friend's mom who had limited hand movement due to a stroke. I made her a joystick from a piece of PVC pipe, two plastic spools, and a plastic case about the size of a cigar box for the base. The way the mechanism worked was I used strips of packing foam to center the PVC pipe inside the hole in the spools, and mounted 4 microswitches in a collar facing the PVC pipe. Instead of a big movement like a traditional joystick, it required only 1/8 inch "twitch" movements to close the microswitches, but was surprisingly precise & responsive considering it was made out of scraps and hot glue. (But then again I designed it to work with the limits of the materials I had access to, and "tuned" the placement of the switches as I built up the device.)
- rhcom2 8y ago
  Awesome. Which games did she like?
  - phaedrus 8y ago
    I can't remember well now, but I think she mainly played Super Mario World, and perhaps an SNES racing game. I never got the chance to actually play with/against her, but my friend told me that she did use it.

294 points by lamchob 8y ago

It's good to see people working on stuff, this type of inclusive development really makes me excited!

Really great move by Microsoft. People often worry for things like IE support but people with disabilities often falls between the chairs.

sgtmas2006 8y ago

This controller is going to be wonderful for far more than just disabled people, I can't wait to use it for more interactive possibilities.

Marazan 8y ago
Having all the button connections over 3.5mm jacks is a super cool idea.
fredley 8y ago
Good products "for people with disabilities" are often just good products full stop. Take for example Good Grips[1], a brand of cookware and kitchen tools. Initially designed as specifically for the elderly and people who otherwise have trouble gripping conventional kitchen utensils, it's become a bestselling brand in its own right (I own several things) because the products are just that much more ergonomic and sturdy than anything else. [1]: https://www.oxouk.com/ https://www.oxouk.com/
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Some other recent HN article did an interesting presentation on the reason so many Infomercials for products seem so weird is that the only way to sell some of these products designed specifically to help the differently enabled have to be sold as if they were for particularly lazy fully capable humans. In order to try to get the product to market at all, they have to market to the weird/lazy/strange mainstream target market you see in Infomercial pitches, and often you miss that little bit of "originally built to help my elderly friends or invented to help someone after a stroke".

iicc 8y ago

>$99.99 That's incredible :) It's USB, so this is going to end up being used for far more than gaming.

radiorental 8y ago
Here, let me save you $50. It's the same principle, just a USB breakout box. But one better - capacitive input instead of just switches (of course, switches work too) https://makeymakey.com/ https://makeymakey.com/
- iicc 8y ago
  You're right. I wrongly assumed this had 2 capacitive controllers (like a steam controller) on the top not just 2 massive buttons.
- wolrah 8y ago
  Except that doesn't work with an Xbox. There are definitely dozens of existing solutions for PC use, but the console world has long been protective of their gamepads and generally don't allow arbitrary custom devices to be connected unless they're built by hacking up a "certified" device. This is, to my knowledge, the first time any major console has officially supported custom input devices. It's annoying that it requires a proprietary bridge device rather than just getting rid of their artificial limits on HID input devices that work fine on Windows 10 on their Windows 10 powered appliance, but I guess it is still progress.
  - opencl 8y ago
    The PS3 worked with standard USB HID gamepads out of the box. Too bad Sony dropped this support in the PS4. Oddly though Sony has allowed developers to ship their own custom USB HID drivers in PS4 games, which some fighting games have done to allow people to use their old PS3 fight sticks.
- OskarS 8y ago
  It's not just a USB breakout box. On the back of it, is has standard inputs for assistive devices that map directly to Xbox controller buttons, as well as settings for different input profiles. $100 is a totally reasonable prize, especially in this market.

thomasfedb 8y ago

Can we swap "disabled people" for "people with disabilities" please?

sterlind 8y ago
I'm okay calling myself a disabled person, personally. I have some pretty severe disabilities, in spite of which I stay employed and productive. I find identifying as disabled empowering, since it acknowledges the constant effort I put into my health and mobility. I respect that others don't like the phrase "disabled people," since it's something they have rather than something they are. But there's not a consensus on what phrase to use.
- stordoff 8y ago
  Ditto. "People with disabilities" feels, to me, very forced and as a result stands out, whereas "disabled people" feels like a natural way to phrase it.
- thomasfedb 8y ago
  I think it's entirety valid to be happy with the label "disabled" and to embrace that. My background is as a carer for children with intellectual disabilities, and I'm always disappointed when the first thing somebody wants to know about a kid is their diagnosis. I'd much rather tell you that Terry likes Football than tell you he has Autism. People often get fixated on the disability however. Person-first language, in my experience, encourages people to see and think about the person before they see the disability. It encourages then to consider that perhaps John is stroppy because he's a moody teenager, rather than adding it's being he has Autism.
therobotking 8y ago
This is why Trump won!!!
hungerstrike 8y ago
The original title says “people with a broad range of disabilities” so I agree with you, but only for that reason. I can’t stand the way that HN changes titles. Otherwise, I’m not going to tiptoe around people and change my speech patterns because they might be offended by something that meant no offense to them.

namanyayg 8y ago

This is amazing. Microsoft frequently does things that offer amazing new ways of interfacing AND are hackable enough to have flexible applications. I have fond memories of owning and "hacking" the Kinect and connecting it to my PC, to develop custom code to control media playback and stuff. I never owned one, but the Surface also looked quite unique. However, I feel these products don't reach the level of "lovability" other such products enjoy. I wonder if this is an execution or PR problem? Either way, hope the Adaptive Controller enables a lot of people to enjoy video games and we see some interesting unconventional applications of it soon.

balls187 8y ago
Mostly because the majority of users aren't interested in hackability of devices. Kinect didn't have much in the way of software, and the OTS stuff was clunky. It also followed on after the Wii, which also featured clunky software, also had tremendous 1st party support to keep it viable.

scarface74 8y ago

I can only use one hand. I use to play video games all of the time but once game controllers started requiring two hands and shoulder buttons, I couldn't play most games. I could play some games with fighting controllers (https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Officially-Licensed-Microsoft/dp/B01MSEPQ55 https://www.amazon.com/HORI-Fighting-Commander-Officially-Li...) I also tried one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Playstation-handed-Dragon-controller/dp/B005EQTSLC https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Playstation-handed-Dragon-cont... - but could never get the hang of it. I might try this. My son is very into video games and I would love to play with him again. The only games that I played with him when he was younger were fighting games like Tekken and Soul Calibur and a few simple beat em up games but the games he plays now are too complicated to play with one hand. EDIT: I'm still trying to figure out after watching the videos, how this works with one hand. They showed a guy who had cerebral palsy that affected his right side but they never went into details about how he adapts it. Maybe they were just expecting the target market to know about assistive technologies? I've never used any so I don't know anything about them.

morsch 8y ago
Consider PC gaming. Lots of games work perfectly well with just the mouse.
- freeflight 8y ago
  And there are lots of options in mouse selection, MMO mice can have dozens of buttons, the Roccat Nyth even allows replacing of the side-buttons with custom molds.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Also MMO keyboards / controllers and one-handed keyboards (like the Maltron)
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I couldn't bring myself to pay $479 for a keyboard and then have to relearn how to type after spending close to forty years typing with one hand on a regular QWERTY keyboard. Last time I checked, I can type at about 50 wpm but since most of my typing is coding, as long as my typing speed can keep up with my thinking speed (with autocomplete), it's not the bottleneck. This is my favorite keyboard: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRC6U2C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VRC6U2C/ref=oh_aui_sear... I can reach from the Q to the P with one hand and can touch type on it.

donatj 8y ago

This is a very heart warming development for me. My dad has one hand, and only one finger on the hand he does have. He LOVED playing Atari 2600 and NES when I was a kid and I have very fond memories of playing games with him. After the SNES though he completely stopped playing games out of frustration, angry about why they needed so many buttons. I don’t think he ever even attempted to play our N64, let alone later consoles. I really hope the price point is accessible, I’d love to play games with my dad again.

watwut 8y ago
Had you looked at http://www.ablegamers.org/ http://www.ablegamers.org/ ? They can help to select right assistive technology for your dad.
arkh 8y ago
You may want to let him try some "simple" games : things like super hexagon or one finger death punch require only 2 keys. And some reflexes.
vingiesel 8y ago
> I don’t think he ever even attempted to play our N64 Understandable, since the n64 controller was designed for people with 3 hands.
kingbirdy 8y ago
Outside of this controller, if you and your dad have any interest in fighting games, you could check out Dive Kick - it's a two button fighting game, and they sell (sold?) a special controller with only two buttons.

myth_drannon 8y ago

There is also a personal angle to Microsoft involvement with these type of initiatives. The CEO has two children with disabilities and it looks like he is pushing for an inclusive company more than any other CEO. There is also Gobabygo which is an open source organization that modifies toy cars for children with disabilities http://sites.udel.edu/gobabygo/ http://sites.udel.edu/gobabygo/

melling 8y ago
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
kelukelugames 8y ago
I work on accessibility. Apple has always been the recognized leader.
- jrs95 8y ago
  I think we all know that, but that doesn't necessarily mean Satya isn't putting in the effort. Apple has kept accessibility in mind for a lot long than he has been CEO of Microsoft.
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    Accessibility is a much harder problem for the Windows and Android platforms, because they're dealing with a bigger and more open ecosystem with a lot of legacy baggage. Apple's very tight APIs make it much easier for software to be accessible by default.
    - maccard 8y ago
      I know you're talking about windows, but remember this controller is targetted at xbox, which is even more locked down than any of Apple's platforms.
      - WorldMaker 8y ago

discussedbefore 8y ago

I recently learned two XBox controllers can function as one, an ease of access feature called Copilot. https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/copilot https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/copilot

WorldMaker 8y ago
It's mentioned in this article, as well, because Copilot was partly built to enable someone with one of these Adaptive Controllers to keep using the Xbox controller inputs they are comfortable with and extend them with this controller for the more uncomfortable ones. Then the designers realized there are plenty of other reasons people might want to pair controllers and there was no reason not to release it as a general feature for everyone.

dalbasal 8y ago

Disabilities may be some sort of a starting point, but this sort of product/feature doesn't necessarily begin and end there. A controller is a UI paradigm, like the keyboard & mouse "desktop" paradigm. Serving a userbase that can't use a standard UI will lead to invention of new ones. This could easily lead to mass market products/features that people will want regardless of disabilities. Particularly interesting (to me) are paradigms being developed for the blind, because they can't rely on displays. This is the same sort of problem as amazon echo, driving mode phones UIs and other products that need paradigms. The key though, the key is that blind people are a "captive" market. They can't just use the display UI every time the voice UI sucks. This gives developer the opportunity to keep improving it until the number of use cases where voice UIs work better than display gets big enough.

elefantastisch 8y ago
> Everyone has abilities, and limits to those abilities. Designing for people with permanent disabilities actually results in designs that benefit people universally. Constraints are a beautiful thing. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive
- scoggs 8y ago
  I was thinking how awesome it is when developers think of all sorts of players from the very start by ensuring that their entire game, game system, and controller systems are configured for full customization from the start. It's something that I think every dev, that is capable, should be striving to do in everything they can (even outside of gaming specifically) but as you indicated above it's really awesome for EVERY kind of person, even if I'm not differently abled at all and all I want to do is swap shoot and reload's buttons because of my own personal (even it it's stupid and/or annoying) preference.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    One of the things that Microsoft's Inclusive Design efforts have made really usefully clear is that everyone is "differently abled" circumstantially/over-the-course of a day. It's a silly example: but if I'm eating a sandwich one hand and trying to use a computer, in that moment I'm a one-handed computer user, and can benefit from many of the same one-handed benefits of someone using a computer one-handed for more permanent reasons. But as silly as that example is, there are so many tiny moments in your day like that that maybe you dismiss them or you don't appreciate how differently abled you are at different points in the day. It's a bit like thinking through the classic riddle of the sphinx ("what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two during the day, and three in the evening?"). Our "ableness" is never a static constant, and its so useful to think of all the more transient states we live in every day. The more we include everyone, sometimes the better we include ourselves, too.

eksemplar 8y ago

I find it amazing that Microsoft can be doing this sort of thing, mean while, at the windows team they decided to change that windows taskbar sound control tool so that you now need to do “start->control panel->soundoptions” to change your primary source, rather than just right clicking the damn icon. One in a long range of terrible designs for windows. How can a company simultaneously be so great and so terrible at usability?

bfrydl 8y ago
By being big.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Apple is big, their usability hasn’t gone to shit.
emptyfile 8y ago
Not sure what you mean, but you can change your primary audio source by clicking the right corner arrow on the little window that pops out when you click the speaker icon. EDIT: PIC https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_57d5d5cf71711.png https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/img_57d... Also this literally doesn't have anything to do with the subject of this thread.
- AndrewGaspar 8y ago
  Yep. They actually made it MUCH easier to change your default audio source in Windows 10 (not sure which particular release this change came in).
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Hmm, well I guess my stuff is broken, because I only have the option to buy a headset when I do that - disabled btw. But then, my windows still keeps turning down the brightness automatically unless I reboot after logging on the first time, so maybe it’s just a little incompatibility with my old ass laptop.

tryonqc 8y ago

as someone with a visual impairment I am always amazed at how little we talk/learn about accessibility and its lack of inclusion in the tests of new products. I like this "inclusive desing" term better though. (even though its the method to achieve accessibility)

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
It's market optimization. 99% of any new product's potential initial userbase does not have accessibility issues. Especially startups need to focus on getting the highest return on investment initially, before proceeding to smaller groups of potential customers. This is also why most new products are launched in the US first - huge market, no borders - instead of Europe where people have to deal with a few dozen languages and local laws.

braderhart 8y ago

You know what else would help make Windows more accessible for disabled people? Open source.

vanderZwan 8y ago

All of the four controllers shown seem to be great, but it's funny that the joystick is basically just the Wii nunchuck. That's not a dig against Microsoft, I suspect Nintendo just really hit it out of the park with their Wii-mote design and that there isn't much else to improve. I'm left-handed, and I remember realising that without thinking, I had switched to using my right hand for the analog joystick instead of the left one. This was months after I got a Wii - it was so natural that I hadn't even noticed. I don't recall anyone ever giving Nintendo credit for this, but their nunchuck-controller was pretty much the first mainstream controller for a console that was fully ambidextrous.

wang_li 8y ago
>the first mainstream controller for a console that was fully ambidextrous. While it's not a console as such, the Atari Lynx in the 1990s could be flipped over so that the joypad was on the other side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Lynx

dragontamer 8y ago

Storytime. I had an online acquaintance who I practiced with in a fighting game called Blazblue. Said friend was also a martial-artist who also did live-steel fights. Dangerous, yes, but apparently there were rules about what weapons you could bring in, "first blood" and other such rules to try and keep things non-deadly. Anyway, one of his opponents used poison as his weapon, and now his hands were permanently F'd up due to that one poison fight. Long story short: I didn't see him online much after that. Its difficult for disabled people to get controllers that work well for them. And its not just arbitrary fights where people can lose the fine motor control of their hands. I know people who lost fine control after a bad car accident. (Fortunately, this one was temporary and after about a year, she got most of her motor control back into her hands). So any research into allowing injured people to better play video games (a hobby I'm very much like), is a win in my eyes. I've got at least two people who've I've personally met who would benefit. Even with today's advanced medicine, its not guaranteed that motor control will return back to your hands if you are injured. And injuries can really happen to anybody.

InitialLastName 8y ago
It doesn't even have to be injories; a stroke can easily cause pretty much unpredictable amounts of fine motor control loss in one hand or the other, and that can happen to anyone at any time.

phaedrus 8y ago

When I was in junior high or highschool I made an SNES controller for my friend's mom who had limited hand movement due to a stroke. I made her a joystick from a piece of PVC pipe, two plastic spools, and a plastic case about the size of a cigar box for the base. The way the mechanism worked was I used strips of packing foam to center the PVC pipe inside the hole in the spools, and mounted 4 microswitches in a collar facing the PVC pipe. Instead of a big movement like a traditional joystick, it required only 1/8 inch "twitch" movements to close the microswitches, but was surprisingly precise & responsive considering it was made out of scraps and hot glue. (But then again I designed it to work with the limits of the materials I had access to, and "tuned" the placement of the switches as I built up the device.)

rhcom2 8y ago
Awesome. Which games did she like?
- phaedrus 8y ago
  I can't remember well now, but I think she mainly played Super Mario World, and perhaps an SNES racing game. I never got the chance to actually play with/against her, but my friend told me that she did use it.