

Could force feedback joysticks help disabled gamers?

Tera Kirk's picture

Via Second Life for the Visually Impaired



Hold the Falcon’s interchangeable Grip and feel a character’s actions, instead of controlling a game with mouse-clicks and meters. Feel the weight of a basketball as you shoot it towards a hoop—the momentum and impact as you swing a virtual golf club and strike a ball—the recoil of a weapon—or the physical characteristics of virtual objects and environments.

Novint Technologies is partnering with Valve to make games like Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source compatible with the Falcon, and I'm glad to see popular games take advantage of this technology. While tactile features might be a lot of fun for anybody, they could be especially useful for gamers with visual, auditory or physical disabilities. In the latter case, someone who has trouble feeling where, say, their hand is could find extra tactile feedback helpful in locating it.

Similar technology has been used to help disabled people navigate 3D environments by creating tactile maps or translating sign language into spoken or written words. A paper called "Using a force feedback device to present graphical information to people with visual disabilities" (PDF) describes real world uses for SensAble Technologies's PHANToM.

Some video games like Second Life are incorporating haptic technology to assist disabled gamers, and I wonder how much more could be done. Perhaps supplementing more creepy noises with jitters from the game controller could make many survival horror games more accessible to Deaf and hard of hearing players, for instance. Tactile feedback could even make more games playable by people who are deafblind.

Category Tags
Platform(s): PC  
Developer(s): Novint Technologies  
Topic(s): Gaming with Disabilities  

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