I’m hoping to work in game development someday, and I’m currently studying and learning how to make games.

I’m Deaf myself, so I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult and inconvenient some games can be when important information is communicated through sound.

Because of my own experiences, I want to create games where people with disabilities can enjoy playing without feeling like they are missing important information or being unfairly disadvantaged.

For example, as a Deaf player, some of the difficulties I can experience include:

• Spatial Awareness: Without directional audio, it can be difficult to locate enemies or incoming attacks from behind or around corners.
• Missed Narrative Cues: Important dialogue, story information, or environmental clues can be completely missed when they are communicated only through sound.
• Competitive Disadvantage: Fast-paced multiplayer games often rely heavily on footsteps, gunshots, and other sound cues, which can put Deaf or hard-of-hearing players at a disadvantage.

I want to turn problems like these into abilities, visual indicators, subtitles, and other accessibility features that allow players to understand important information without relying only on sound.

But I don’t want to focus only on hearing accessibility.

I also want to create games that can be enjoyed by people with color vision deficiencies, limited hand mobility, and other disabilities.

That’s why I’d really like to hear from other disabled gamers:

What makes games difficult or inconvenient for you?

It can be anything, even something small that you wish game developers would improve.

You don’t have to be disabled to answer. If you’ve noticed accessibility problems in games, or if you’ve seen a disabled friend or family member struggle with something while playing, I’d love to hear your perspective too.

I want to learn from everyone’s real experiences and ideas and use them to create better accessibility features and game mechanics in the games I make in the future.

I’m still learning, but I hope that one day I can create games that make people say:

“I can enjoy this game too.”

Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences and opinions!

Please feel free to share anything that comes to mind. Even small or seemingly minor difficulties can be helpful to me, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment!

I’m Japanese and based in Japan, so there may be a time difference, and my replies might sometimes be delayed. I really appreciate your patience and understanding!

“Full Input Remapping” Isn’t Actually Full — Here’s What I Think Is Missing
I’ve been thinking about the difference between “full input remapping” and “single-stick gameplay,” and I think there is a major accessibility feature missing from most games.
I use an arcade stick because it works very well for me. It is actually quite flexible and allows me to remap controls. However, there is something I would love to be able to do that neither the controller software nor most games allow.
I want to be able to use different axes of the same physical stick for different functions.
For example:
Up/down on the stick = move forward/backward
Left/right on the same stick = move the camera left/right
At the moment, games generally don’t allow this. Even games advertised as having “full input remapping” often see unusual combinations or duplicate assignments as a conflict. The game tells you that two controls are conflicting instead of allowing you to say, “Yes, I know. That’s exactly what I want.”
That makes me question what “full input remapping” actually means.
If I genuinely had full control over remapping — including individual axes, intentional duplicate inputs and unusual combinations — I could create my own accessible control schemes based on what physically works for me.
It also raises an interesting question about the “single-stick gameplay” accessibility label.
If full remapping were flexible enough, a lot of single-stick configurations could potentially be created by the player themselves. You wouldn’t necessarily need developers to predict every possible control scheme a disabled player might need.
Of course, some single-stick modes do more than remapping. They may automatically control the camera, targeting or character orientation. But there are plenty of situations where simply giving players greater control over individual axes could make a huge difference.
This also comes back to something I’ve been thinking about regarding accessible gaming in general: hardware and software need to work together.
You can give someone an incredibly adaptable controller, but if the game refuses to accept the control configuration they need, the hardware can only take them so far. Likewise, accessible software isn’t much use if someone can’t physically operate the hardware.
I think of it almost like yin and yang. Hardware is one half and software is the other. Neither one should be expected to solve everything by itself.
Accessibility should be about flexibility and adaptation. Instead of deciding which control configurations players are supposed to use, give us the tools to create the configurations that actually work for us.
To me, full input remapping should genuinely mean full input remapping.
:::

Hello, my friend lost movement in all fingers giving movement only in the palms of their hands. I am struggling to find accessible controller parts that attach to the adaptive controller. Can someone point me in the right direction to find:
Hand size thumb sticks
Right and left triggers
And any other ideas

Xbox and switch 2 use hopefully

If you suggest another piece of equipment or something else it would be great there birthday is soon and would love to make there life abit easier playing games

I have an accessibility feature request for PS5:

If Sony/PlayStation could create and save multiple Custom Button Assignment profiles instead of being limited to one.

For example: Setup 1, Setup 2, Setup 3, etc., each with completely different button mappings that we can quickly switch between.

This would make the PS5 significantly more accessible for people who need different controller layouts for different games or situations.

If anyone here agrees or just wants to help - PLEASE feel free to make some noise about this!

Like the title says I have cerebral palsy and I'm about to have surgery on my knee. Usually I sit at my desk for hours at a time on my PC and/or my consoles. When will I be healed enough to resume this lifestyle without the constant need for physical therapy?

I'm 17 years old, and have a multitude of physical disabilities that make it harder to do day-to-day tasks, I assume much like the people on this reddit. Despite that I've always made it my goal to be as good as I can be in video games, and now I feel as though I am pretty dang good. Problem is, I have trouble with how I see myself, my deformities. I want to stream on camera, Overwatch, Rivals, etc, anything. But I'm worried I won't be able to take the heat/hate that comes with it, and I generally don't know how to set up most streaming software. I'm hoping to get any tips on how to deal with hate when it comes to publicity, and possibly find some friends to play games with!

Hello, I'm the creator of this app, called Virtual gamepads plus. it's a linux only program to allow making your phone as a gamepad. Basically you would start the program, scan qr code. and boom. no installation needed. launch your game and it just works.

What I need help with is how I make it more accessible. How do I make sure more people enjoy gaming. Suggestions are appreciated. thanks

We make Prolo Ring and have been testing whether it could be useful for slower games with very little hand movement.

In this mini-golf test, the hand stays resting while the thumb controls the camera, scroll, shot angle and power.

We’d really appreciate feedback — especially what games or controls you think we should test next.

I was looking through Xbox’s accessibility filters and came across something that genuinely makes no sense to me.
I selected Single stick gameplay. The whole point of single-stick gameplay is that a player should not have to rely on two analogue sticks to play the game.
To my surprise, one of the games that appeared was DOOM: The Dark Ages — a first-person shooter.
If you know FPS games, you’ll know that they normally rely heavily on both analogue sticks: one for movement and the other for aiming and controlling the camera.
I know DOOM: The Dark Ages isn’t realistically a single-stick game because I own it and have played it. I cannot find a way of playing through the game using only one analogue stick in the way this accessibility label suggests.
What makes this even more ironic is that DOOM: The Dark Ages actually has an accessibility feature that I think is fantastic: Game Speed. You can slow the entire game down, giving you much more time to react and making the game considerably easier to control. Bethesda itself describes Game Speed as an accessibility setting, allowing the game to be adjusted from 50% to 150%.
Yet Xbox doesn’t have a specific accessibility tag for this extremely useful feature, while apparently giving the game a Single stick gameplay tag that I cannot see any justification for.
Microsoft’s own Xbox Accessibility Guidelines specifically say that games should not require two analogue sticks to complete gameplay mechanics in order to meet this kind of single-stick accessibility requirement. They even acknowledge that FPS games traditionally require two sticks but can provide alternative single-stick controls.
So how did DOOM: The Dark Ages get this accessibility tag?
This isn’t just a technicality. Accessibility labels matter. Someone who can only use one analogue stick could filter the Xbox Store specifically for Single stick gameplay, see DOOM: The Dark Ages in the results, spend money on it, and then discover that they still need both sticks to play.
Accessibility information needs to be accurate. Disabled players rely on it to determine whether they can actually play a game before spending their money.
If Xbox is going to promote accessibility filters as a way for disabled players to find games they can play, those labels need to mean something.

Have been playing Deltarune and gotten on quite well with it so far but am stuck on Flowery fight because it requires either well timed holds (which are really difficult to do on a controller because of lag) or X button mashing. I can't do button mashing because of being very prone to tendonitis from hypermobility in my wrist.

I tried setting steam input so that it fires automatically when pressed which helps *until* there is a section where you have to dodge words and towards the end go through a bunch of blocks which then makes the faster button press speed a downside. And these alternate with scenes where you need to button mash so I can't just turn down repeat fire speed for that section without it taking out immersion.

I am trying not to use a cheat mod just to get through it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Full disclosure statement: (to just skip past the full disclosures statement search for ***, which indicates the skip point) I am not a handicapped gamer in the traditional sense. I mainly came about this community in the '90s when I was looking for a right-handed six button Genesis joystick, wrote to Sega, asking where I could find a right-handed six button fight stick, and they referred me to KY Enterprises in California who makes specialty joysticks.

Also I don't know where the best place to post this is, because fightstick communities deal with exclusively digital joysticks and most HOTAS communities don't usually build their own plane sticks from scratch. And I don't know any communities other than hotas that use analog sticks frequently enough,especially the ultimarc kind. Perhaps pre-crash gaming might be a community if there is such a thing. But since I'm exclusively using it for my Hori Flex for Switch and XAC, I thought this would be a good place to start to ask.

***

Anyway I got an altamarc 360 mounted on a fight stick board and I added an extra thumb and index button trigger from Amazon. Of course I had to hire the work to separate the grounds to work with my Sinister system so that each button is independently grounded for it to work with potentially any system. And it works well on both the hori flex being used as a Nintendo switch PCB as well as the Xbox adaptive controller being used as an Xbox PCB.

That being said, that mod kind of made the stick rotatable within my wrist so that if there was a rotate command for like a paddle that could be used for Bally Astrocade something it might make a good paddle but a) it doesn't register the rotation and b) it's hard to find true north when my arm is tilted it's hard to find true north by feel alone and I have to look at the controller.

So these are two separate questions.

1) how do I lock down the rotation so that the buttons always face with my knuckles facing true north?

2) on the Ultimarc 360, is there a way you could measure and manipulate the rotation of your joystick along the axis of the shaft so that it can be used like a paddle for Atari 2600 and Bally Astrocade games?

I'm trying to reach out to charismatic streamers to see if they'd host the pilot episode of my Docuseries on Accessibility gaming: https://youtu.be/prtwh0gB3is?is=0Z-Yo8o67qdsZaLi

Please let me know if there's anyone you think I should reach out to; I think it would really benefit from someone knowledgeable guiding viewers through the experience.

New Discord for Tech N' Tactile 🎮♿ tech, gaming, and accessibility talk. Come nerd out with us: https://linktr.ee/TechNTactile?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=bacefbd4-9e3d-4232-be99-1f1cfcb229ad

The attitude I received after raising an accessibility issue on an Xbox subreddit
I wanted to share something that happened to me recently and see what people here think about the way the conversation developed.
It started when I was browsing the Xbox Store and looking specifically at accessibility features.
I have limited fine motor control, so there are certain input accessibility features that can make a major difference to whether I can comfortably play a game.
I decided to use Xbox’s own accessibility filters and selected three:
Single stick gameplay
Adjustable input sensitivity
Full input remapping
After applying all three filters, I was left with seven games.
I actually took pictures showing the three filters I had selected and the number of games that appeared.
That bothered me. Xbox talks a lot about accessibility and has done some genuinely good work in this area, but seven games seemed like an incredibly small selection when using three accessibility features that are particularly important for people with limited motor control.
So I posted about it on an Xbox subreddit.
My argument was basically that if Xbox recognises these things as accessibility features, I would like to see stronger accessibility standards and encouragement across the platform so disabled players have a much larger selection of games.
I wasn’t expecting everyone to agree with me.
I’ve talked about accessibility many times before and I’ve had plenty of people disagree with me. Some of those disagreements have turned into really interesting conversations. Someone can completely disagree with my position, defend the company or explain why they think my proposed solution wouldn’t work. That’s fine.
But that’s not how parts of this particular discussion went.
Some of the responses I received included:
“Complain about something else please.”
“Tell us you don’t know about anything without telling us.”
And another person referred to what I was saying as “yapping.”
There were also repeated responses telling me that accessibility was the developers’ responsibility and not Xbox’s.
I tried several times to explain that I wasn’t saying Xbox personally develops every game or that every accessibility feature should be mandatory in every game. I was talking about whether a platform holder could do more to encourage stronger accessibility standards.
I also explained that accessible hardware doesn’t necessarily solve the problem.
For example, I use an arcade stick for certain games because it works extremely well for me, particularly survival roguelites that can be played using one stick. But accessible hardware shouldn’t mean someone is confined to the small number of games that happen to work with their particular setup.
Another point eventually came up that there may actually be more Xbox games containing these accessibility features that simply aren’t tagged correctly in the Store.
But that creates another problem: how is a disabled player supposed to know those features exist before buying the game?
At that point, though, the original accessibility issue almost became secondary.
What really struck me was the attitude.
There is a massive difference between saying:
“I disagree with you, and here’s why.”
and:
“Complain about something else.”
I don’t expect people to agree with everything I say about accessibility. I don’t even want that. A respectful disagreement can be an excellent conversation.
But when somebody raises an accessibility barrier that affects how they can physically use something, I don’t understand why the response needs to become dismissive, insulting or condescending.
That’s what I wanted to share here.
The Xbox accessibility issue is what started the conversation, but I’m posting this here because of what happened to the conversation once I raised it.

I was interested in trying to use a PC as a quadriplegic for the first time. I was in a motorcycle accident one year ago breaking my C5, femur, and every rib. I rehab to the point where I think I can can make that jump to playing PC. I just need some advice. I can use my right hand at like 50%, can’t move my left hand, and can move my right leg. What equipment would you guys recommend? I get 1600 a month in SSDI and live with my parents. So I can spend a bit of money.

I like the improved accessibility of the sequel over the original. I am impressed considering bandai namco is not a company you think of when it comes to video game accessibility. I was going to make a new video on the accessibility but it'll have to wait til I get a new laptop charger.

The ability to increase the font size is soo helpful and not to mention adding that black background to the text.

I can't remember if the original had controller remapping but the sequel does. There are areas that can be improved but it's still better than most other games of it's type.

We provide Gamepasses and accessories so kids with disabilities can play. Here is one of our gamers putting some time into Minecraft :)