AbleGamers

In 2012, The AbleGamers Foundation opened "The AbleGamers Center on Game Accessibility and Inclusive Play" in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The center offered a place for people with disabilities to experience new accessible technology as well as a maker space for custom controller design and prototyping.[21]

AbleGamers' facility includes a life-size Songbird from BioShock Infinite donated to the charity by Irrational Games in 2014,[22] in addition to rare items such as original Fallout concept art and signed games.[7]

AbleGamers expanded to a new facility, The AbleGamers Center for Inclusive Play, in Charles Town, West Virginia, in 2017. The building was previously a US Coast Guard facility,[6] and includes space to hold consultations, demonstrations, and has a 3D printing studio for manufacturing of specialized equipment. It was funded by a grant from Level Access.[23] The new facility is a much larger space with more room for AbleGamers to create and display hardware, now has a dedicated streaming room, and had many features, such as wide doors, which made it beneficial for supporting disabled guests.[6]

AbleGamers has since moved to Kearneysville, West Virginia, and has widely expanded. The new headquarters building features gaming memorabilia, a full workshop, and the previously mentioned life-size songbird.

"The AbleGamers peer counseling program crafts individualized strategies for people with disabilities to develop solutions to accessibility challenges, combat their social isolation, and join a community of millions of players worldwide.

Our peer counseling team consists of players with disabilities and occupational professionals who work together to find the best solutions to enable play. Through these one-on-one sessions, people with disabilities can connect with other like-minded players who can share their knowledge and experience firsthand."[25]

These peer counseling sessions also play hand in hand with the grant program. Adaptive technology is not always affordable. When AbleGamers find players who meet the requirements for the program, there are supportive opportunities that allow the often custom hardware to be granted.[25]

The Engineering Research team works in tandem with the Peer Counseling team. When situations arise that do not have physical answers, the engineering team gets to work designing solutions. They often take controllers and modify them to fit the player's needs, whatever that may entail. The Engineering Research pillar has a state-of-the-art facility equipped with 3D printers and laser C&C cutters at their disposal. They currently have three patents, including one design patent.[26]

The Community & Inclusion pillar sits right in the middle of the five pillars. This pillar is about combating the social isolation that comes with having a disability. The gaming community itself has historically been rich with social interaction and sub-communities that allow it to grow and thrive. AbleGamers aims to include disabled players into that already vast gaming community. Community & Inclusion works to improve accessibility at events, break stereotypes, and provide representation for people with disabilities. They also support a large group of people with disabilities through their twitch stream. The AbleGamers twitch stream allows player with disabilities to interact with other players, share their experiences, and highlight accessibility and people with disabilities as an active part of video gaming.[27]

The User Research pillar focuses on the present and future of accessibility. They are tasked with finding and documenting current options for players in games as well as barriers that still exist. "With this pillar we strive to anticipate the next big areas, such as augmented and virtual reality, so that these new technologies can be accessible faster than previous generations of gaming."[28]

The Player Panel is a huge part of User Research as well. The Player Panel is one of the world's largest group of people with disabilities dedicated to lending their experiences to make the world more accessible. There are over 400 players currently in the Player Panel program. AbleGamers acts as a middle man between these players and gaming studios (Indie to Triple-A). The purpose of the connection between the players and the gaming studios is to allow those companies to test their accessibility features, overall improving accessibility throughout video games.[28]

The User Research team also has multiple publications:

• Cairns, P., Power, C., Barlet, M., Haynes G. (2019) Future Design of Accessibility in Games: A Design Vocabulary. Int. J. of Human-Computer Studies, 131, 64–71, doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.06.010
• Cairns, P. , Power, C., Barlet, M., Haynes, G., Kaufman, C., Beeston, J. (2019) Enabled Players: the value of accessible digital games, Games and Culture, online
• Beeston, J., Power, C., Cairns, P., & Barlet, M. (2018, July). Accessible Player Experiences (APX): The Players. International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs Springer, 245-253
• Power, C., Cairns, P., Barlet, M. (2018) Inclusion in the Third Wave: Access to Experience. In Filimowicz, M., Tzankova, V. (eds) New Directions in Third Wave Human-Computer Interaction: Volume 1-Technologies. Springer, p. 163-181 [28]

This pillar was designed to educate game studios on how to make their games more accessible. Peer Counseling and Engineering Research are great at helping people with physical disabilities, but it all starts with the games that are being made. Professional Development teaches an APX (Accessible Player Experiences®) course. There are currently 22 APX design patterns that help developers craft accessible experiences into their games. For some studios, those patterns were not enough. The Professional Development team came up with a multi-day, 16-hour course that remedies this. This completed course certifies developers as APX practitioners and gives them the deeper knowledge they need to create better accessibility in their games.[29]