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The nose knows... how to let quadriplegics move and speak (video)
We've seen quadriplegic transportation directed by brainwaves, speech and even the occasional Wiimote, but your best bet might be to follow your nose. Israeli nasal researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science unveiled a "sniff controller" this week, that measures nasal pressure to control a wheelchair joystick with surprising precision (see a video after the break) and a specially-developed typing interface. The latter is likely the more important advancement, as Discover heartwarmingly reports at the source link, by giving patients with locked-in syndrome (a la The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) the long-lost ability to speak. Best of all, the technology is inexpensive compared to alternatives on the market; while a Stephen Hawking-esque eye-tracking system can cost tens of thousands of dollars, Weizmann scholars reportedly pieced the prototype together for $358. The device is already being considered for public availability by the institute's technology transfer company, Yeda R&D -- find out just how it works in the full study at our more coverage link.
The Classifieds: She'll be coming 'round the mountain
The Classifieds brings you weekly news from around the WoW community, including your shout-outs to perpetrators of the famous Random Acts of Uberness. Have you ever wondered what lies on the other side of the mountain? What's going on down there below your flight-path flyover? Wonder no more: The Glitch Hunters have arrived to show you the unspoiled areas of vanilla WoW in all their pre-expansion glory. Contrary to their name, The Glitch Hunters explore entirely on live servers with no exploits or trickery. They use simple tactics to gain access to difficult-to-reach areas, including Levitate, Slow Fall, vehicle mounts, Death Grip and the liberal use of pally bubbles. "We're traversing the continents and documenting all the weird and unique landscapes and borked terrain before the Cataclysm revision hammer destroys them for good," explains Glitch Hunter Alyssa of Dawnbringer (US). Explore the entire series -- now some six episodes deep -- on The Explorers League YouTube channel. If the scenery of classic WoW leaves you feeling nostalgic, wander through our growing collection of galleries devoted to zones that will soon feel the sweeping hand of the approaching Cataclysm: Undercity, Scholomance, Eye of Eternity, Shattrath City, Sunwell Plateau, Azshara, Tirisfal, Redridge, Stranglethorn Vale, Western Plaguelands, Quel'danas, Trial of the Crusader, Deadwind Pass, Teldrassil, Tanaris, Blackrock Mountain, Thunder Bluff, Feralas, Mulgore, Moonglade, Ironforge, Westfall, Darnassus, Thousand Needles. Vanilla WoW holds many charms -- but if it's more current news you're after, let's crack open The Classifieds!
Rex, the robotic exoskeleton, aims to make wheelchairs obsolete
New Zealand isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of tech innovation, but this set of bionic legs might just realign that perception a little bit. The product of seven years of development work, the Rex exoskeleton is capable of supporting the full weight of a person -- making it suitable for paraplegics -- and moving him or her around in a familiar bipedal fashion. It's operated using a joystick and control pad and is simple enough for handicapped users to self-transfer in and out of. The best news, perhaps, is that it's about to go on sale in its home country this year, with an international launch following in 2011. The worst news? Probably the $150,000 (US) initial asking price, but then we'd hardly say we're qualified to judge the value of being able to walk again. Video and full press release after the break. [Thanks, Kurt and Simon]
Report: Industry missing out on revenue from aging, disabled gamers
According to a report coauthored by the Able Gamers Foundation and 7-128 Software, the game industry is losing out on up to $3 billion in revenue by failing to cater to older or disabled gamers. The report alleges that the gaming population is getting older, noting that the ESA pegged the average gamer's age at 35 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 30 in 1995. It states further that more and more homes have access to game consoles and internet-connected PCs, opening the industry to a wide potential audience of older players -- players that are more prone to disability than the young. Finally, Baby Boomers -- those born between 1946 and 1964 -- have much more disposable income than younger demographics, adding up to billions in potential revenue. "If the gaming industry does not realign their priorities to include accessible gaming," notes the report, "then a collision will happen in the next five years," resulting in "lost sales and lost customers." The report proposes that game developers begin implementing accommodations for disabilities in their games, including variable font sizes, color blind modes, variable speed settings and more in order to cater to the disabled market. "By making video games accessible to gamers with disabilities, which includes older gamers," writes co-author Eleanor Robinson, "game manufacturers will unlock a lucrative, paying market of consumers for years to come." [Via The Escapist. Image: AbleGamers.org]
Toe Mouse!
You know what, the more we look at this thing, the less crazy we think it is. While the concept of mousing around your desktop on foot may appear foreign at first, we imagine we can get used to it after a while. Not that it's designed for lazybones like us anyway, as the wireless Toe Mouse concept is primarily intended to help out people with upper limb disabilities, who aren't able to navigate in the usual manner. Just to score some extra flair points, designer Liu Yi also points out it has a "streamline model that symbolizes the motorboat surfing the internet." So it's not just practical, it's also poetic. Click the source link for more pictures of this flip flop-inspired creation.
LookTel's 'artificial vision' makes Windows Mobile useful to blind people (video)
There's a surprising abundance of tech geared toward helping out people with visual impairments, but you won't find too many smartphones populating that sphere of electronics. Aiming to reverse this trend, LookTel is in the Beta stage of developing so-called artificial vision software that combines a Windows Mobile handset with a PC BaseStation to provide object and text recognition, voice labeling, easy accessibility and remote assistance. It can be used, much like the Intel Reader, to scan text and read it back to you using OCR, and its camera allows it to identify objects based on pre-tagged images you've uploaded to your PC. Finally, it allows someone to assist you by providing them with a remote feed of your phone's camera -- a feature that can be useful to most people in need of directions. Skip past the break to see it demoed on video. [Thanks, Eyal]
Touch Bionics offers ProDigits for those missing their amateur ones
Touch Bionics has been at this bionic prosthetics business for a while now, already providing i-Limb solutions to those deprived of the use of their hands or arms. The company's latest innovation is to reduce all that tech down to the level of individual fingers, with its freshly announced ProDigits being able to replace anywhere between one and all of your precious little piggies. Relying on a traditional myoelectric regime -- which reacts to muscle signals from the residual hand -- or pressure from the remnant finger for its input, this invention can even be tweaked by doctors (over Bluetooth) to adjust the finer motor functions on a per patient basis. Costing up to £40,000 ($65,000), these new prosthetics will be custom-built for each person, and there are plans to apply to have them made available through national health insurance -- in countries that are into that sort of thing. Video after the break.
AbleGamers launches reviews with accessibility in mind
Before you send an overtly hostile dissertation to AbleGamers about their outrageous 6.7/10 scoring of Batman: Arkham Asylum, keep in mind that the site's newly launched review section focuses on accessibility above all else. While that particular review mentions the game's many qualities, some of them may be difficult to appreciate by disabled players. The site offers critique and advice on several aspects you may take for granted, including the presence of subtitles, colorblind options and adjustable controls. "There are countless sites out there that review games for their graphics and sound, but no one is looking at the game from the standpoint of accessibility," explains Mark C. Barlet, President of the AbleGamers Foundation. "With 63 million Americans with disabilities this is a focus that is needed and who better to do it than the flagship site for disabled gamers, AbleGamers.com. I hope that game makers now add AbleGamers to their list of news outlets to send review copies to."In a show of support, Joystiq Publishing has sent over its highly anticipated puzzle game, Is This Color Red or Green?. We reckon it's at least a nine.
15 Minutes of Fame: Quadriplegic player attacks progression raiding
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. Tales of players who succeed at WoW despite disabilities (physical disabilities, mental issues, you name it) always attract a certain amount of fascination. How is it that we can spend so much worry and effort grinding trivial hurdles while disabled players are taking care of business in situations that would Alt+F4 most of us? Worry is one thing you won't hear much of from Quadilious, a quadriplegic player (yes, quadriplegic -- you read that correctly) who's into progression raiding (yes, progression raiding -- you're still reading things correctly) in ToC-25 Heroic and Ulduar hard modes. Ever have one of those days when you wish your in-game struggles and real-life hurdles seemed a little less daunting? Have a good dose of perspective -- Quad certainly does.
Bone-anchored hearing aids filter out noise, finally ready for human implantation
Think those noise-canceling earbuds are hot stuff? Imagine if said technology was applied to an advanced type of implantable hearing aid, and you'll have an idea of exactly what Earthlings with severe hearing loss now have to look forward to. For years now, we've watched as cochlear implants became more effective in lab tests, and up until recently, we've had strict medical testing procedures to thank for the inability to actually get one. Now, one Colin Hughes will soon be amongst the first Australians to enjoy a "new bone-anchored hearing aid designed to adjust to noisy environments, quiet conversations and the varying rhythms and pitch of music." Due to a birth defect that left him with atypically narrow eustachian tubes, Colin was never able to take advantage of traditional hearing aids for any length of time, but now these $12,000 (per pair) devices are promising a new life for the 70-year old bloke. Our favorite feature? MP3 players can be directly (and discretely) attached, enabling old geezers to tune out old hags without them ever noticing.[Thanks, Mike]
15 Minutes of Fame: The two shall be as one
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes - from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.There are couples who play together, and there are couples who play together. Jen and Mike, members of <The Panic Attacks> on Scilla-US, fall into the latter category - so much so that perhaps their playstyle doesn't accurately qualify as "playing together" at all. More accurately, Jen and Mike play as one, sharing the controls to seamlessly guide their mutual character, FertZane, through Ulduar and all the rest of WoW's endgame content.A rare disability called arthrogryposis keeps Jen wheelchair-bound and binds the couple's gaming together. The congenital disorder causes joint contractures, muscle weakness and fibrosis and leaves Jen with quite limited use of her arms and legs. Nonetheless, she says she's always loved video games because it was something she could enjoy as long as she could manage the controller. "For using my computer, I use a pen in my mouth to type and trackball mouse that I can hold in my lap," she says. "This makes computer gaming a lot more challenging for me, since I cannot look at the monitor while using the keyboard - but a mouse just can't always do everything that needs to be done."
The Daily Grind: Do MMOs need to be more accessible to disabled people?
Last week, a blind friend of mine decided to get herself addicted to WoW. We re-rolled characters on a different realm and are slowly leveling. I'm not a fan of leveling but suddenly looking at a basic UI, a new set of icons and an unfamiliar map has reminded me how scary WoW can be for a visually impaired person. The same applies to every other MMO from EVE (which is especially terrifying due to a lack of a humanoid avatar) to Second Life and I often think MMOs should come with the option of an in-game white can or a service animal. I suppose the one perk is you can't run into people and if you do fall off a cliff and die, you get to rez at the nearest graveyard.I can't help but wonder that there is still a lot games companies need to do in order to make MMOs much more accessible to all kinds of disabled people. I would love to have icons which double in size when you mouse over them, icons on the map, much larger text sizes for the chat box and a radar circle on the floor to tell you how close until you aggro something hostile. For some kinds of disabled gamers, MMOs can offer freedom from their disability and a chance to distance themselves from their everyday lives but for others - usually visually related disabilities - MMOs can range from passable to appalling. So come on readers, do you have a disability that affects your life? Do you play MMOs? How do you find the experience? Do you wish your chosen MMO had more options for people with a specific disability? How would you alter your MMO to make it easier and more comfortable to play.
Visually impaired players: The unseen inhabitants of Azeroth
The other night I was chatting to a friend of mine on Skype and she casually mentioned -- because she knows I play WoW -- that she was about to roll a character (Elfly) for the first time. Elfly had had an account for a while but had never been able to try it out while at university and now she has the whole summer stretching out in front of her. Yes, I suspect you know where this going, especially when she twittered a few hours later expressing her new-found love for Azeroth.But there's a catch. Like me, Elfly is disabled. I'm a VIP (disabled shorthand for visually impaired person) and she's (in her own words) a blindy (shorthand for, well, a blind person). This means we play with our noses touching the screen and get lost. A lot. To give you an example for what the world (in-game or real) is like for me, nip to your nearest Azerothian tavern and quaff flagons of mead until you get completely smashed and the screen goes all blurry, alternatively just click here. Anyway, between the pair of us, we're so blind that we both think Blizzard should insert white canes and guide dogs in patch 3.3's game files. Though, given the game setting, maybe that should be an ornate white staff of sightlessness and a guide wolf?
15 Minutes of Fame: Dislocated but not disconnected, Part 2
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.Last week, we met Lileya of Lightbringer-EU, who has a rare, lifelong condition that causes her joints dislocate at the drop of a pin. Stacking up a Lifebloom roll can literally dislocate a finger or her wrist. "I get up in the morning, and the first thing we do is check to make sure that all my joints are in place -- which they rarely are," she recounts. "I need help sitting up, and the first thing my husband says when I put my feet on the ground is 'Slowly, let's not dislocate those ankles standing up.' Each day is different but the same."What keeps Lileya at the keyboard despite these seemingly insurmountable challenges? We visited with Lileya to explore how her love of end-game raiding and her struggle to balance a precarious collection of symptoms and physical challenges keeps her connected to WoW and to life. This week, Part 2 of our interview with this determined player.
15 Minutes of Fame: Dislocated but not disconnected
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. We've written about disabled gamers before, but Lileya of Lightbringer-EU brings a perspective to playing WoW that we haven't heard. Lileya's disability is a rare, lifelong condition that makes even the simplest tasks impossible some days. From her ankles to her knees, from her fingers to her shoulders, Lileya's joints dislocate at the drop of a pin. Even stacking up a Lifebloom roll can dislocate her wrist. "I don't have all that much in common with Aaron who has recovered enough that he can walk without assistance and drive, or Kalzedhan who plays for 12 to 14 hours a day, or Catten," she muses. "I have a rare genetic disorder that I have never lived without. My life is very different from theirs." Lileya's relentlessly frank, articulate blog, In the Fringes, exposes what it's like to live with the horrifying prospect of keeping track of all your joints on a minute-by-minute basis. We visited with Lileya for a two-part interview exploring how her love of end-game raiding and her struggle to balance a precarious collection of symptoms and physical challenges keeps her connected to WoW and to life.
Braille e-reader concept can't be far from reality
The technology's already here, we just need a venture capital firm and a determined entrepreneur to make it happen. A foursome of designers -- Seon-Keun Park, Byung-Min Woo, Sun-Hye Woo and Jin-Sun Park -- have banded together to create the above pictured concept, an e-reader for those with limited or no vision. Their Braille E-Book concept theoretically relies on electroactive polymers in order to change the surface's shape as pages are turned, and while we fully expect the battery life to suffer due to all the necessary commotion, it's definitely a start that needs to happen.
AbleGamer talks to Blizz about 3.1 accessibility
AbleGamers has a conversation with Jeff Kaplan about the upcoming accessibility changes to the game in patch 3.1. We saw in the patch notes already that there would be a new colorblind mode added to the game, but Kaplan goes into more detail here -- Blizzard is making sure that even when the interface depends on color to get information across (as in, how difficult your quests are or whether you'll get a skill point from making a crafting recipe or not), there will be other text and symbols in there that relay that information without color.Unfortunately, while the changes that are going in the game will be helpful. AbleGamers points out that the game isn't perfect for those with colorblindness yet -- mob levels are often shown to the player in a certain color, and there's no option yet for players to see that information in any other format. Additionally, Rogue combo points are shown by filing those little circles in with colors, and colorblind players who aren't able to see that color will have difficulty with that mechanic as well.The good news is that, while Blizzard does want to make sure their core game is as accessible as possible, there's lots of room for addon authors to do more. Colorblindness is surprisingly prevalent, and everything coders can do to make the game easier to play will be welcomed by those who need it.
15 Minutes of Fame: Disabled player goes hands on with joystick
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.Back in October, we posted a way for players with hand dexterity issues to play WoW using a joystick. Inspired by WoW Insider posts about playing WoW with a Wii remote and playing WoW while exercising on a treadmill, reader Aaron Stacey submitted an ingenious script in hopes of helping others with similar disabilities. The keystone of his strategy: GlovePie, a Windows freeware emulator that was originally written for virtual reality gloves. GlovePie allows gamers to play any game with any type of controller, from joysticks to gamepads, mice, keyboards and Wiimotes.This month, 15 Minutes of Fame swings back around to speak with Aaron and learn more about he combines gaming with a physical disability.
15 Minutes of Fame: Tanking with a panic button
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.It's always fun to indulge in WoW talk with fellow players, but our favorite interviews for 15 Minutes of Fame happen with people for whom WoW opens doors – whether as fun and frothy as indulging another hobby by crafting a replica of Booty Bay entirely out of Legos or as meaningful as being able to game in a non-threatening, non-judgmental atmosphere among like-minded friends. This week's featured player exemplifies the power of WoW to energize and empower people's lives. MMOs can make wonderful outlets for disabled players, who find online camaraderie and 24-hour access amenable to their unique needs. Kalzedhan Hurenfal of Feathermoon-A US not only games "around" his limitations but in fact focuses his crosshairs dead on them: he's a tank with a diagnosed panic disorder.Kalzedhan suffers from a handful of debilitating mental disorders that keep him socially paralyzed, homebound and unable to function in a productive work environment. Yet through WoW, Kalzedhan not only has been able to re-engage in relationships and personal achievements – he does it in the hotseat as a tanking Warrior.
How to play WoW with a joystick
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/How_to_play_WoW_with_a_joystick_WOW_Insider'; Reader Aaron Stacey wrote to tell us about a simple new script he's developed that allows him to play WoW more fluidly, despite having little fine dexterity control in his right hand. Since a spinal cord injury, he is only able to grasp and release his hand. Prior to developing this script, Aaron used to play only with his left hand using "an abundance of key binds and keyboard/mouse switching." He was restricted to caster classes because of the difficulty in moving and attacking at the same time.Inspired by our Wii remote post and our treadmill post, Aaron came up with an ingenious idea that he hopes will help others with similar disabilities. The key is GlovePie, a piece of Windows freeware (donations welcome) originally written for virtual reality gloves, which allows you to play any game using any type of controller you like. GlovePie's website lists controllers like joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, and Wiimotes, among a host of other hardware.Find out how to do it yourself after the break.
