Easy Access is a semi-regular look at gaming for the physically disabled. For anyone unfamiliar with the term mule, dig this.
I’m garbage at playing guitar. Somehow I managed enough finger dexterity in my youth to actually become competent at playing the trumpet, but there’s always been something about working my way across six strings that’s eluded me. I am, as the kids say, all thumbs. What’s even more embarrassing is that I can’t even muddle my way through playing fake guitar. When Rock Band is inevitably broken out on late Friday nights and I grudgingly yield the mic to a friend, I can only handle the guitar parts on easy, the gaming equivalent of being patted slowly on the head and offered a cookie. A sad state of affairs, no doubt, but my problem with fake guitar is different than that of the real deal. It’s the timing, matching my fingers to the oncoming visual cues, that gives me so much trouble.
Eelke Folmer’s new Frets on Fire (an open source Guitar Hero clone) mod, Blind Hero, might actually let me play on medium or higher. The University of Nevada Reno AP’s game is built specifically for the blind and allows you to play Frets based on sound and touch alone via a specialized glove used in conjunction with the guitar controller. The glove uses pager engines to create haptic feedback, signaling the player when a note should be played and with which finger. Based on a test sampling for twelve players, three of which were themselves blind, the glove works like a charm.
So, yes, I’m thrilled, but, more importantly, Folmer’s work is another exciting step for opening games up to a wider audience. I’ve thought about the largely unexplored frontier of designing videogames outside of traditional interface types a lot in the past few months and Folmer is a pioneer in the field.
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