Game on: levelling the playing field for gamers with disabilities, with SpecialEffect’s Mick Donegan

MD 0:00

I've never seen anyone who's not enjoyed seeing someone that has found it difficult to play a game suddenly able to play their game. That's why developers develop games, they love their game. They're proud of it. They want as many people to be able to play it as possible.

TS 0:18

Welcome to Made For Us, a podcast about the intersection of innovation and inclusion. It's for anyone who's curious about how to develop products that work better for all of us. I'm your host, Tosin Sulaiman, a podcaster and former business journalist. My guest today is Dr Mick Donegan, the founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, a charity that helps people with severe physical disabilities play video games. SpecialEffect also advises game developers looking to improve the accessibility of their games and was invited to help develop the Xbox adaptive controller, and the recently released PlayStation access controller.

MD 0:52

This is a train that is not going to stop, it's rolling. It'll increase speed, with more people able to play, but it's not going to stop it's got momentum.

TS 1:01

In our conversation, Mick tells me how his career in education made him realize the power of technology to help people with disabilities. After many years teaching children with learning and physical disabilities, Mick went on to become the deputy director of a national center in the UK supporting young people with complex communication needs through technology. Mick started by telling me what sparked the idea for SpecialEffect.

MD 1:23

I'm the founder and CEO of a charity called SpecialEffect who do our best to help people with physical disabilities play video games. I'm an adjunct professor of inclusive design at OCAD University in Toronto. I realized there was a need for something like SpecialEffect when working at the National Center helping young people access their education and communication. Parents were asking me if there's any way they could go to find a way to help their children play video games. Because early Two thousands, these children see their brothers and sisters playing video games more and more. Basically, in the UK, there's nowhere that I could send them with the specialist skills required. Specialist professionals who could find the best parts of the child control, the best way of that particular child controlling and accessing technology. I decided as there's nowhere else in the UK to send them to, to set up my own charity.

TS 1:35

And this is because you believed in the power of play. Can you talk a bit about that?

MD 2:20

Basically, as a teacher who has a background in teaching, I knew how important it is in a child's development, how important it is for them to be able to play, usually the first few years of a child's development, it's all play, it's all opportunities to play and learn through play. I also knew that the opportunity to compete against yourself, to better your own performance, to be able to compete against other players and the motivation that comes, the self esteem that comes if you can beat a challenge, all of those things these children were missing out on. And I just knew it was a big gap in these children's lives that needed filling. And so even though, as I said, I'm not a brilliant gamer myself by any means, but I know the opportunities that video games can offer, that nothing else can, especially to these children, it just offered a great opportunity. But unfortunately, at the time, no one else was offering that opportunity. So that's why I started the charity.

TS 3:16

And I wanted to talk about the initial reaction when you launched SpecialEffect. Because this was completely new in the UK. I understand that you had a bit of pushback and skepticism, but I'm sure that there were parents that welcomed it as well. Could you tell us about what the overall reaction was?

MD 3:31

You're quite right, at the time. It's not that long ago, Two thousand and seven. But if you looked a lot of the headlines in the newspapers, a lot of them had a very negative perspective on videogames, partly because people I don't think really understood them, you know. And so a lot of things that were happening, were blamed on video games in a way that x certificate films or any other form of entertainment wasn't blamed. So the idea of starting a charity, and trying to raise funds for something that was actually bad for people. And not only that, but inflicting this technology on people with disabilities, it wasn't really a brilliant business plan that I had, it was a case of right I'm going to fund my own charity by working doing a job and building up the charity in my own time, and try to just prove what difference this technology can make to children's lives.

And that's what we did. I was lucky enough to gather a small team together at that time. And we were able to not only hack, in effect, try and develop our own interfaces because there weren't any hardware interfaces where you could plug things like the switches, there wasn't any way that you could plug one of those into console and make it work. So I was lucky enough to take on some technical specialists who were able to enable us to modify a way in for these young people, then we'd video that, we'd share it and it was great opportunity to show video games developers and help everyone to understand what the potential benefits are, the difference that it can actually make, in the hope that companies would see what the benefits were and invite our opinion based on the increasing number of people that we were helping to access video games, to come to us, and to collaborate with us to make their games more accessible. That was the hope. And lo and behold, it actually happened, surprisingly enough. So we have been fortunate enough to be invited to help some companies to make their games more accessible, to be involved in developing some of the hardware interfaces as well. So amazingly, this crazy idea has actually managed to make our contribution and continue to obviously, helping more people around the world with physical challenges played video games.

TS 5:39

And I'd love to know more about the people that you're helping. Who are they? Where are they based? How do you find them? How do they find you?

MD 5:47

In a nutshell, they find us via the website, anyone can get in touch and ask for advice or help. In many cases, we are able to arrange a video call or answer their query by email. In some cases, it needs a face to face assessment. And we can do that and do do that in the UK. We're providing an increasing range of online resources, so that people can help themselves. We've got gameaccessinfo, which is a website within our website, where we review new games, and show people how you can access them with a range of controllers and new accessibility features. So there's training resources there. But also, last year, I think it was we launched the dev kit, which is designed specifically for developers to learn from examples which you've got online. from other developers, this is the way that they overcame this challenge. So they can learn from each other as well. So that's what we've tried to do to be sort of catalysts for change, really.

TS 6:48

And how old are the people that you work with? Is it predominantly children?

MD 6:51

I'm glad you raised that. Initially, I was concerned, you know, my area of experience was young people up to early twenties. But I soon realized that as soon as I started with the charity, people of all ages, got in touch and asked for help, which just made it ridiculous that I was putting an age limit on it. So the youngest that we've worked with is a child aged two, the oldest is well into their eighties, if not beyond so, all ages, really. If it's a severe physical challenge that is preventing you from playing a game or games you want to play, then we'll do our best to advise or help.

TS 7:23

And you're able to help people who have very limited movements. Can you talk about some of the challenges?

MD 7:29

Absolutely, yes, there are three types of disabilities if you like. One is those people who were born with a particular condition, you know, say like cerebral palsy, others where there's a traumatic injury, such as a spinal injury, for example, and the other is a progressive condition. So you've got a condition, it might be neurological condition like Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS, motor neurone disease, where because of someone's condition, they physically find things more and more challenging. But as people, we work with people with the more severe physical challenges, which a lot of them, the ones, say, with the progressive condition, at one point they might have been able to play a game, but gradually, they get weaker. And so it becomes difficult even just to move those little joysticks on joypad, or press the buttons, those are the groups that we help. The big thing is that their condition all of them changes all the time, that condition changes over time. If they're a child and they start to play with cerebral palsy, they'll get stronger, they'll learn more, they'll develop cognitively, the kinds of games they want to play change. And the technology out there changes as well as the technologies that's available to help them. And so you're talking about a whole stack of variables, which is why we provide a lifelong service to those people we assess. So that's why everyone we work with, they are part of our ever increasing caseload, and anyone at any point in their lives can get back in touch with us for an update.

TS 8:56

Yeah, I saw on your YouTube channel that there was someone that you started working with at the age of five, and at the time, he was 15. So you know, you've been working with him for 10 years.

MD 9:05

Absolutely. And it's a joy doing that. I'm looking actually, you can't see it but I'm looking at a photo now of a guy that I first knew him when he was three in my previous charity, and now he's at college. He's doing a gaming course at college. And he as with a lot of other people, for example, with cerebral palsy who we've followed, they'll start off, maybe with a joystick, or even the single switch. As they grow up - fifteen, sixteen, seventeen - you'll find that the number of controls in some cases they'll have about sixteen buttons, positioned some with their heads, some knees, etc, two joysticks and playing games, certainly, but far better than I ever will be able to. And it's just a joy to see that.

TS 9:44

So how big is your team? How are you funded?

MD 9:47

It's a good question. There are about thirty of us at the moment, including one or two part timers, got some operations, the admin side of things got fundraising team, but the biggest team is the service delivery team who are in involved in our research and development and assessments. And the way that we're funded is basically we raise all our funds, we don't charge for anything that we do. If we feel it's a good use of our time to help that individual, if it's a good idea that we feel that we, we can actually help with, and help to make an impact, that will be a benefit to the people who we're here to help, then it's no charge. And that's a privilege to be able to do that.

But with fundraising, just a huge range of things, fundraising events, it might be a run a marathon, or, you know, we do the London 10k. And there are some brilliant online streamers who fundraise for us and it's just amazing. And we have a day every year, which we call One Special Day. And that is an opportunity when the games industry, anyone in the games industry, any company in the games industry, if they want to, they can fundraise for us in whatever way suits and it might be that the it's some kind of dress down Friday or whatever. It might be in some cases that they say, All right, we'll give them a percentage of what we earn on that particular game through sales in the UK or whatever for that day. Basically, all of those donations add up. You know, we don't ask anyone, we just sort of that's the day if you want to help. Great. And we'll say big thank you. But if you don't, that's fine.

TS: 11:16

So I wanted to talk about the different pillars of your work. So one pillar is creating the bespoke setups for people to be able to play games. Can you talk a bit about what that involves?

MD: 11:26

Yeah, we call that the loan library, which isn't a very exciting name. But basically, what it boils down to is a team, which will include technical specialists, and occupational therapists, and additional support as well, if it's appropriate for me to be involved, then we'll provide an assessment or provide online support to help someone to game. It may be that we can help them by email exchange, it may well be that it will be a video call or video calls, or an assessment followed by the loan of some access equipment, so they can actually try it out before they make any decision about what suits them. We'll then modify the positioning etc, we'll give it a try, we'll modify the positioning of that equipment until they end up with a comfortable, safe and successful hopefully way of them controlling technology to access the game or games that they want to play. That's basically the way that we work.

There's also the sort of r&d side if you like, where we collaborate with developers. So that's another strand of our work, where members of that team will liaise with developers to help those developers along, as I say, often with other organizations and specialists, to advise them on how solve a particular problem in order to make the games more accessible, make the software more accessible, or hardware. And a couple of examples of the hardware side of things are that we were one of the organizations invited to help develop the Xbox adaptive controller, and more recently, the Sony access controller so that more of these gadgets like the chin, the joysticks and etc, etc. can be plugged into these consoles in the first place. The next thing that we're involved in is to help developers to find ways to provide assists and accessibility features within the games to make them more accessible to these kinds of devices.

TS: 13:20

I was curious you when it comes to adapting people's set up to be able to play games, what are some of the most challenging cases that you've worked on?

MD: 13:29

A huge number, you know there's a guy I remember with motor neurone disease, a progressive condition. And when he was younger, he used to be able to run about and play football with his brother, and loved football, football. But then he gradually became weaker. And at the same time, parts of his body he lost control of and he was desperate to play FIFA, which is more accessible now. But at the time, it was quite difficult for him to access. And basically, we just found a way for him to be able to combine a number of movements for him to be able to play for the first time in fifteen years. First of all, he played football himself and loved it, used to play with his brother, then they used to play FIFA together. But it had been fifteen years since then. And we just found him a way to be able to play, we got an email from me, it's just said, I just beat my brother five one. thank you for giving me my life back. And you see that and you think actually that just made a difference. It's worthwhile.

TS: 14:33

Yeah, that's a great story.

Everybody's got their own level of complexity, basically. And we will take on anyone even if they can only move their eyes. So yeah.

Wow, this must have an amazing impact on the gamers that you're helping. Another thing that I remember from your YouTube channel is some people talking about games as a form of escapism, also allowing them to forget about their physical limitations.

MD: 14:57

Yeah, exactly. That's where the mental health sort of benefits are, you know, as I say a lot of the people we're working with, they do have a progressive condition, they do get to a point where they're unable to actually take any control at all, to access technology at all. And the difference that it can make, actually finding a way to be able to enable them to engage with other people and play the game or games they've always enjoyed playing, to be able to do that. It gives them an opportunity to take control. It's very sad when someone we've been supporting for years as we do, gradually tweaking their systems to accommodate whatever stage their condition's in. And it's quite remarkable that sometimes, even though we've been in regular touch with that person, we've been helping them game throughout, we'll find out that they've passed away. And so often, it's come as a surprise, we've kept them gaming till the very end of their lives. And that is pretty darn special. If you think about the guy who hadn't played anything for 15 years. And we helped him, you know, he's passed away now. But we helped him play until at the end of his life, which is just as I say, it's such a it's a privilege.

TS: 16:07

Yeah, I can imagine. And you mentioned that you through the work that you do with individuals, you're able to have an even bigger impact by using your expertise to help developers. Can you talk about some of the achievements that you're proud of? You mentioned that you were involved in the Xbox adaptive controller, how did your input help to shape that product?

MD: 16:28

Well, as I say, we were invited to provide our input along with other organizations. And we had regular meetings with the team at Xbox, and from the experience that we'd had in hacking our own interfaces, and finding ways and we were able to share what we've learned and give what advice we could. And when that was released, it did make it far easier for a lot more people to be able to play the games, and as I say, was sort of a catalyst for change, which helped accelerate game developers to actually say, Ah, so this is the way in, so to give them an indication of how they could modify their games to enable people to play the games with those devices. So I was really delighted that we were able to have some input with that.

That was followed by Logitech coming up with their Adaptive Switch kit, which they invited us to help advise them on developing, a kit with a range of different size pressure required and a number of switches, which can be positioned in different parts of the body, shoulder, head, or whatever. For hardware terms, that's been followed by the Sony access controller, we've helped them to make that an interface that will enable people to plug a lot more controllers into the game, it's lovely to see that happen. As a general point, each interface device like that results in more people buying them. So there will be people with disabilities who buy an adaptive controller, because it's available, who want to play games, which means that there's an incentive for software developers to make the games more accessible, partly because of corporate social responsibility. And partly because actually, as time goes by, there are more of these interfaces and devices that will plug into them. There are more users out there, there's a bigger market out there. So on every level, really, it's worthwhile doing. And this is just an aside, but I haven't yet met anyone from the games industry, who hasn't actually whose heart hasn't been in this, there is such thing as corporate social responsibility. And there are some lovely people right through right to the top.

TS: 18:32

So you mentioned corporate social responsibility as a potential driver of the increase towards inclusion. But what else do you think is driving this shift towards inclusion in the games industry?

MD: 18:43

It's a good question. I think it is one of those things where we've never been campaigners, you know, that's not what we're good at. It's not what we want to do. We just want to be a catalyst for change to help share ideas, including our own, so that things can move along, and people can learn from each other. And one of the things I believe is helping to bring about change is developers learning from each other. And learning from, you know, sources of information. I know that our dev kit, you know, the online resource is providing developers with a way to learn about how to use these interface devices. So what's happening is that the numbers of users, the number of interface devices are going up like that. And it's sort of incremental, the curve goes up and up and up, because people are seeing other people using it. It's becoming more accepted and more expected. I think this is a train that is not going to stop, it's rolling, it'll increase speed, with more people able to play, but it's not going to stop. It's got momentum. And that excites me. I can only speak positively about the way things are going in the games industry personally.

TS: 19:47

And how much do you think is driven by financial considerations and the realization that they could potentially be missing out on a lot of revenue by not making games more accessible?

MD: 19:57

As I say, it's a win win? It's both. you know, I never seen anyone who's not enjoyed seeing someone that's found it difficult to play a game, suddenly able to play their game. That's why developers develop games, they love their game. They're proud of it, they want as many people to be able to play it as possible. So there is that joy of anyone who's creative, that joy of seeing people enjoy something that they've created. So there's that that satisfaction. But also, as I say, you know, the win win is the fact that they will actually generate more revenue by more people being able to play their game, there is nothing not to like about what is happening, what has happened. For me, we want people to make money out of making these games. And that's a great thing, because it means that there'll be more games, more great games people to enjoy.

TS: 20:41

And if you had to summarize the changes that you would like to see in the industry, what are the key things that you would like to see more of?

MD: 20:50

A continuation of that sort of drive forward. There are a few things that would be great. And quite often, it's just a lack of awareness, really of the difference that it would make if someone just did something very simple. And I can just think of an example of that. And that's the, if when you get your x box, you'll get your Xbox controller that will come with it. If you get your Sony, you'll get your Sony controller. And unfortunately, you can't always cross them over and use them with the other console. Now, that may be just an oversight, because as I understand it, you can use them with a PC. That's not a challenge. But if they just made it so yeah, got your gamepad, you can use it with whichever console you want, that, believe you me, would have a huge impact. We work with so many people for whom, with your Xbox gamepad, you might find that they find that the joysticks are too close or the buttons are a bit too hard to press. But there'll be a subtle difference in the PlayStation One, the Sony one, which made that very, very comfortable. It's so frustrating that we can't just say, well use this one. It's just that there's sort of compatibility issues. But I think it's more lack of awareness than anything else. But there are things that we can share.

But another little change is if you've got your gamepad. You see a lot of people with for example, muscular dystrophy, a lot of young people with muscular dystrophy. First of all, they had gone through a stage where they were running around and playing football, then they go through a stage where the play using a gamepad. But then they can go through a stage where it's just too much effort to move the joysticks on the GamePad. So it'd be great if we could just go somewhere and off the shelf, get one with more lightweight joysticks. But instead of that we have to get our tech guy to take that GamePad to bits, and do some very, very clever work to modify it so that they are easy to move. There are little things like that, as the market increases, I'm hoping that there will be more devices like that available that because there will be a market, it's just a case of making that initial investment, obviously. So there's lots to do. But I just want to emphasize that we're heading in the right direction and all credit to the industry really, for the change that I've seen since Two thousand and seven.

TS: 23:01

That was Dr. Mick Donegan, the founder of SpecialEffect. If you'd like to learn more about their work, access their dev kit or support the charity, you'll find the links in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. Thanks for joining me on Made For Us.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai