Are you a gamer? Would you like to be?

Chris_Alumni

It's accessible gaming week in Scope's online community, and we'd love to hear your gaming stories.

Do you use an adapted controller to make gaming possible/ easier? Are there any particular barriers that you feel stop you from playing games? And are there any that you've overcome? What changes would you like to see to make more games more accessible? Let us know in the comments below.

Make sure you also check out our guest post from gaming charity Special Effect, who helped one girl with cerebral palsy to say the words, "I'm now a gamer." And if you have any questions about accessible gaming, expert Barrie Ellis from One Switch will be on hand to answer all week in our accessible gaming Q&A.

Game on!

rachelcl

I recently discovered that my Game Boy, which I've had since I was a 17-year-old grebo, is still working, as are all my games for it. I really enjoy playing Mario & Yoshi when I have downtime.

Chris_Alumni

@rachelcl - very nice. I've still got a Game Boy gathering dust somewhere, and a Megadrive with classics like Sonic and Columns!

WhiteCaneGamer

@rachelclChris_Scope As a self declared gamer, I feel ashamed that I have never played a game boy. It's almost a required qualification if you want to call yourself a hardcore gamer,  if you're of a particular age, which I am, to have played one. However my eye sight has always been bad enough that I could not see to play on one, unfortunately. 

My gateway into gaming was the Sega Master System and Alex The Kid, shortly followed by the original PlayStation and Crash Bandicoot.

I've now made the move to PC gaming with a bit of Android based casual gaming sprinkled on top for good measure. I don't use any additional modified controllers, assuming you don't count a mechanical gaming keyboard as a valid modification.

However I do use Talk Back on my android phone, in order to access games on that device. I also have to use screen magnification to access some game features on PC, such as reading menus and object labels on games like Minecraft. 

As my eye sight deteriorates, the number of games that are accessible to me is diminishing and I find myself looking towards audio games being my future genre of choice.

welleyenever

Ah, Crash Bandicoot. My first console was a Playstation with Crash Bandicoot 2 bundled with it, and I later got a PS2. Happy days! A friend of mine still has his old Playstation somewhere, we've played Worms on it occasionally over the years since, though it's getting rather hard now his sight has deteriorated.

As well as Crash Bandicoot, I used to enjoy games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Burnout 2, Tomb Raider, Rollcage, Motorhead, that kind of thing. I used to be fairly good at Snake on my old Nokia phone as well, and my friends and I used to play board games like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit on the PC (the latter spoke the questions and options to you, which was really useful!). On the flipside, the most awful game I ever played was London Racer without a doubt. Not from an accessibility standpoint, it was just terrible in every respect!

I haven't had a console for a good few years though. Once I got a job that entailed using computers throughout the day, it became clear that the last thing I wanted to do was then focus intently on a computer game in the evening, certainly not for very long.

For watching TV in general, or more general computer usage, I don't have to concentrate so much, so they're fine. But for a game you really have to pay close attention to do what you're doing, more than you often realise when you're absorbed in it and enjoying it. And when you have a visual impairment that already makes you have to concentrate a bit harder than other people would, it becomes very tiring, and it wasn't doing me any favours. So I set it aside in the end. I've never looked into audio games though, I must admit.