Something that surprised me during my journey through 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gamescom LATAM was how accessible the São Paulo Expo venue was. Ramps could be found everywhere for easy access, and every p🌸anel on all the stages had a sign language interpreter. This compelled me to investigate whether the LATAM gaming industry can foster a better environment for developers on the accessibility front; fortunately, I🃏 was able to have a chat at the event with Christian Bernauer from AbleGamers Brasil, and Barrie Ellis from Special Effect.

Ellis has been working at Special Effect since 2007, a charity set up to support physically disabled people in the UK. However, as years passed they started to stretch things further. “The charit🐓y was set up because, in the past, there was a lack of facilities for families,” he explains. “When their children wanted to play video games, it was very difficult to find the information online, and if you didn’t know what to look for, it was tough to find anything.

“Eventually, we set up a loan library where people could come and borrow the equipment because using assistive technology could be very expensive. Some of it needed to be customized, and some of it was extremely personalized, so we've got a team of occupational therapists.”

Ellis has worked with accessibility for a long time, and has seen the impact technology can have on people’s lives. “My experience goes back to the ‘90s, I worked in a day center with adults that had seve▨re disabilities,” he says. “So I joined and went to the office, and there were all these things in place. There were computer touch screens from the ‘80s, big gated joysticks, with wooden switches.

When Ellis met Mick Donegan, CEO of Special Effect, his passion for technology providing a gateway to accessibility found a perfect match. “There's a lovely story about this lady, who rarely responded to many things, but she loved music. We got her a cassette recorder that was adapted with a big switch, and she's got a fairly straight face until she starts interacting with the switch, and her favorite music starts playing,” he remembers.

“Her eyes started ꦇsparkling so much, and you could see the power of her being able to interact with the technology. So I could always see the point of it, but the machines started getting old. Mick was a teacher in the ‘80s, so you could definitely tell that the equipment there w🔯as starting to get obsolete.”

However, those times are long gone n🉐ow, and with more tec💫hnological advancement, can independent developers be a source of innovation in accessibility?

“From a histor𒁃ical point? Definitely!,” Ellis says. “Some of the earliest accessible games came from teachers and parents in the ‘80s, and a lot of that work is the foundational stone which accessibility is built upon today. For indie programmers, we had little c൲ompetitions since 2004, 2005, making one-button video games so indie devs have been brilliant in that regard for a long, long time.”

Thankfully, the mainstream is catching up. “Some of the accessibility options in The Last Of Us 2 and Forza Horizon [5] are extremely comprehensive, which is important to learn as well. To make your accessibility options accessible, and not overwhelm people”, he states. “Whatever tools are developed to give players more accessibility will always be an advantage for players. No matter how much the generations pass and how much people need to invent again or do over regarding an accessibility tool, that will always be beneficial. It's a universal need that unites all of us.”

AbleGamers has been around for even longer, founded in 2004 in the US, with the Brazil b🍸ranch ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚrunning for the past seven years.

“We partnered up with Gamescom LATAM to have this booth, and we try to bring the most accessible experience ever seen in a gaming show,” Bernauer explains. “We don't have anyone in our team who speaks sign language, and we admit that it's a fault we have, but we collaborated with Econ, a company that works with sign language interpreters online; if a deaf person comes by, we have a panel with a screen that will start a video call with a real sign interpreter, so I can talk to them, and they will translate, so I can communicate with that person.

“We also have an audio description of our booth, so if a blind ဣperson comes, they can locate themselves, which is especially important with bigger booths,” Bernauer adds. My attention quickly shifts to a screen where I can see a match of Counter-Strike 2 with a different UI showing up. “This is Quantum Guide Play, made in collaboration with JBL and Bolha,” he explains. “This app works like a screen reader for the game, so it’ll detect what’s on screen and convert that into audio cues that you can customize in many ways, thus helping a visually impaired person to comfortably play a first-person shooter like CS2 by using this software and the Quantum headset, which has amazing spatial audio.”

As he shows me the rest of the AbleGamers Brasil booth, he introduces me to its crown jewel: the UMAGIC (Universal Modular Adaptive Gaming Interface Controller), which was designed by AbleGamers Brazil in collaboration with Bolha, a creative technology studio from Brazil, to cut down on adaptive controller set-up time “The person will come in, and [regular adaptive controllers] take 15 minutes to set it up,” Bernauer explains. “Then they'll play one game, and if they move to the other station, they’ll have to do it all over again. So this is very time-consuming, it creates a time penalty, and time is of the essence in a show like this, especially for people with disabilities.”

The UMAGIC controller works with any existing platform, and players will be able to change their platform of choice with a simple button. “Especially in big booths, they don’t have adaptive controllers in every station, so the message that this gives is kind of contradictory; you can come here, but the adaptive controller will only be in this location, and this location only. That might be accessible, but certainly is not inclusive,” he says. “So that was bothering us, and we came up with this idea. The concept behind this controller is that it is universal and modula🃏r, so you can use magnetic buttons of any size and shape; they will stick to the controller, but they can be freely customized to fit the needs of the player.”

Since we find ourselves in a new kind of gaming event in a region that is rising at a fast pace, the question seems inevitable; does accessibility have a place in the LATAM gaming industry? “I think we're starting to grow, and while I'm not as much familiar with other Latin American countries, what we see is that companies and shows like this are starting to pay more attention to accessibility,” Bernauer replies. “I would like to say it's part of the work we're doing here, and it is also one of the reasons why we wanted to make this booth as accessible as it is because it's important for people to feel welcome here.”

Before I could finish processing that answer, Christian showed me a door inside their booth that led me to a significantly quieter room. A soundproof room for people who could feel sensory overload, to rest and decompress. It was right then that it landed on me how much I nꦛeeded it after a f📖ull day of doing interviews; thankfully, there was a group of people who thought about that.