How I play video games with spinal muscular atrophy

I am a board member of this org, and I wanted to post the link for donation in here. GOAT is dedicated to open sourcing and open copyrighting materials, schematics, and standards for accessibility hardware. Remember the guy with the robotic legs, and the manufacturer turned them off remotely? That kinda stuff simply cannot be allowed to happen.

GOAT is a fantastic organization, and when Andrei, who wrote this blog, asked for help with his wheelchair, GOAT found the parts he needed, put someone on a plane to his country, and installed the equipment. Andrei was able to go the park for the first time in years, as a result.

Please consider giving to GOAT. It's so rare for a nonprofit to be this scrappy and life changing for people. It's awesome. https://www.openassistivetech.org/contribute/

Insanely cool blog post. I had no idea about the XBox Adaptive Controller: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/xbox-adap...

I am surprised that we have not seen some sick setups shared on HN.

It’s so amazing how far assistive technology has come!

This is a fantastic article but I wish he would have included some wish list or constructive criticism, clearly there are areas of improvement!

But to discern an ask from his writings: At the end he mentions the complexities of working so many different purpose-specific tools— is this perhaps the next area of progress, tool integration and a cohesive experience?

That's cool !

Kind reminder that you can be disabled and still kick ass in videogames. I have in mind Brolylegs (RIP) [1] who ranked very well in competitive Street Fighter 4, despite having to play with his literal face.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrolyLegs

It occurs to me that some of this could be really useful to implement into SteamInput for players with disabilities. Someone really needs to show this article to Valve.

It's really great to see paths forward despite extreme difficulties. My late friend would have been interested in all of these setups, especially the facial tracking. Thank you for sharing this.

Very cool. I have a friend with cerebral palsy and he has very little movement in his hands. I'd love to connect him with these kinds of devices but he has an intellectual disability that makes it especially tough. I wish there was an easy affordable way to get someone who can give advice to a guy like him. He's learned to use an iPhone because SIRI does a lot of things for him, but computers are difficult for him. Which is very limiting

Great point on the Xbox Adaptive Controller — the open source hardware angle makes this even more important. If manufacturers can remotely disable devices, open alternatives become critical infrastructure.

There are several Twitch streamers with similar setups.

It's discouraging when they haven't streamed for a while like NoHandsKen, though I'm surprised to not find any evidence of a couple streams 3-6 months ago.

Glad he gets to do so.

this sort of digital accessibility fascinates me. I'd love to get into working in that field.

curious how playability handles the false positive problem with expressions though, involuntary facial movements must trigger inputs constantly

King shit.

This is great!

Years ago, a buddy of mine was in a car accident and broke his arm. He was then banned for using keyboard remapping software so he could keep playing one-handed. It always bothered me that some game companies treated any modification as cheating, regardless of why it was being used.

I’ve always wondered how developers balance anti-cheat systems with accessibility. Sometimes the same tools can be used for both. It’s encouraging to see companies giving players more flexibility and recognizing that not everyone interacts with games the same way.

Gaming should be about skill and creativity, not whether your body happens to fit the default input scheme.