Polygamer - A Podcast of Equality & Diversity in Gaming & Video Games
  • About
  • Episodes
  • Guests
  • Subscribe
  • Contact

Tag Archives: GameBlast

Polygamer #39: Mark Saville of SpecialEffect

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Ken Gagne

SpecialEffect is a UK-based organization that uses technology to enhance the quality of life of people with physical disabilities by providing them with access to video games. Whether a gamer’s challenge arises from a congenital birth issues, car accident, stroke, or war wound, SpecialEffect adapts video game hardware to make games more accessible, all at no cost to the client.

In this week’s podcast, SpecialEffect communications officer Mark Saville discusses the variety of approaches that the organization’s engineers and occupational therapists take to adapt today’s video games to each unique patient and situation. We discuss how today’s increasingly advanced games and input methods have been accommodated by advances in technology, such as eye tracking; whether motion controls, mobile games, and virtual reality have made games more or less accessible; how accessibility stems not just from physical disabilities, but also cognitive and age-related issues as well. Finally, we look forward to GameBlast, a weekend-long gaming marathon being held February 26–28 as a fundraiser for the organization.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Continue reading →

https://media.blubrry.com/polygamer/www.polygamer.net/wp-content/uploads/podcast/pg39-specialeffect.mp3

Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:41 — 21.8MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More

Posted in Podcast | Tags: AbleGamers, ableism, accessibility, disabilities, disability, GameBlast, GameBlast16, Mark Saville, SpecialEffect, UK, United Kingdom, veterans |

Subscribe

Get our free email newsletter for updates on equality, diversity, podcasts, and more!
Send voicemail

Leave us a message, and we'll answer it on a future episode!

My Tweets

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • Polygamer #128: Reflecting on Eight Years
  • Polygamer #127: Helene Utterback on polyamory
  • Polygamer #126: Aenne Schumann of Arcade Spirits
  • Polygamer #125: Game to Grow
  • Polygamer #124: Cyndi Wiley, Iowa State University’s Digital Accessibility Lead

Other podcasts

  • Character Reveal
  • Checkpoint
  • Ethics and Video Games
  • Feminist Frequency Radio
  • Spawn On Me
  • The Weekly Cooldown

Archived podcasts

  • +7 Intelligence
  • Diversi
  • Engage!
  • Fresh Out of Tokens
  • Gayme On
  • Girl on Guy
  • Less Than or Equal
  • Not Just a Game
  • Nuchallenger
  • Take This

CyberChimps WordPress Themes

Creative Commons License Polygamer by Gamebits is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at https://www.polygamer.net/. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.polygamer.net/about/.