ianhamilton__

It's part of a long line of similar devices. It's less of a controller and more of an adaptor, a way to replace bits of a controller that don't work for you with your own custom solutions tailored to your own needs.

Where it differs from what's already out there is firstly that it includes a few inputs out of the box, so for example the common use case of wanting to replace a couple of inputs (e.g. triggers, L3/R3) with big external buttons is possible for many people without the usual outlay of having to pay to buy the buttons. Combining it with co-pilot amplifies this, you're free to replace as many or as few of the input as you want. Then throw all of that in together with a $99 retail price and you have something that is astoundingly affordable compared to anything else currently available. Reducing the financial barrier to entry is hugely important.

Another way it differs in that it does not look and feel home made, or look and feel like a medical device. It feels like a premium Xbox product. It may seem like a minor aesthetic thing, but it equates to being treated on an equal basis, a customer of equal value, playing through a desirable product rather than a workaround.

And the really big one for me at least is that it is Microsoft who is doing it. The last time a console manufacturer made disability specific hardware was the Nintendo hands free controller in the 80s. Making hardware is a really big endeavour, not something that you enter into lightly. So it's a really powerful statement of intent for the whole industry really, an indication of how valued accessibility really is becoming. It will help other companies move forwards with their own different accessibility efforts.

It's a smaller industry, but interest has exploded in the past year or two, largely due to the work of a single advocate - Michael Heron, AKA meeplelikeus (http://meeplelikeus.co.uk). There has been an ongoing project for the past few years to get some best practice guidelines together, which he is now leading (http://meeplelikeus.co.uk/tabletop-accessibility-guidelines/).

It's an interesting field, there's some crossover with digital game accessibility but some really fundamental differences too. But the really interesting thing for me is that the field is dominated by a pretty small range of publishers, so it wouldn't take much progress with a few key players for there to be really fundamental change across the whole industry.

100% agree with everyone else's comments!

Also if there's just one single piece of advice I would be simply to do something. Do anything. It may sound trite but it's important to keep that in mind. So often I've seen companies, outside of game development as well as within, who see a huge mountain of possibilities in front of them and out of fear of not being able to do everything, decide to do nothing. That's the worst possible thing you can do.

There's no way that anyone can ever nail everything on their first attempt, there's no shame in that. Just find yourself some quick wins and low hanging fruit, there are always some. Anything you do, no matter how small, will simply make your product a better experience for more people. You'll learn from that experience, take important lessons through on to your next project. And so long as each iteration is always a step forward rather than a step back, you can't fail to get to a good place.

There's no way to be sure that any game is epilepsy safe, the concept of epilepsy safe doesn't really exist. But there is an internationally accepted standard of what constitutes a reasonable level of risk, based on common triggers, thresholds for pattern and flashes based on frequency and what percentage of your vision they take up.

The standard is called ISO 9241-391:2016 (snappy name) and is available here - https://www.iso.org/standard/56350.html

You have to pay to download that, but there's a freely available layman's version available here - http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/avoid-flickering-images-and-repetitive-patterns/

There's a test used to measure compliance with that standard, called the Harding test. A decent chunk of the big publishers, people like Ubisoft and Microsoft Studios, have internal requirements to comply with the Harding test.So that's your safest bet really, to stick with the big publishers. Again it's no guarantee at all that any game will be safe, but it is your best bet for minimising risk.

Yeah that's the one :)